Wild finale: Marco Rossi and Caline Addison futures, for cap space, and injuries

street. PAUL, Minnesota — Marco Rossi and Kallen Addison plan to spend most of the summer in the Twin Cities training and skating with the strength and skills coaches at the Wild in an effort to get into training camp in the best position to make an impact next season.

The limitations of the Wild hat are well known. After Marcus Johansson died in free agency Tuesday agreeing to a two-year, $2 million-a-year contract with Minnesota, the Wild had nearly $8.1 million to re-sign goaltender Philip Gustafsson, left wing Brandon Duheme, Addison, and potentially a free agent. Unbound. Ryan Reeves, who General Manager Bill Guerin still wants to bring back.

Although Guerin said during his season finale Tuesday that he’s keeping all options open, the Wild aren’t expected to be able to re-sign Matt Dumba, Gus Nyquist, John Klingberg or Oskar Sundqvist and must decide whether to offer suspended restricted free agent Sam Steel an offer. eligible. They will also consider their options with injured free agent Mason Shaw, who is sidelined with an ACL tear. They could sign him and put him on an LTIR if they need to max out his expected $83.5 million next season or maybe even sign him to an AHL deal and convert him to an NHL deal once he’s ready to return.

But with such a small footprint, the Wild will need cheap players on next year’s roster. Rossi holds $863,333, while Addison’s eligible bid would be $825,000.

“They’re at that point in their life, what they’re doing now is really going to affect them not just next season but as it goes on,” Guerin said. “I think the players are really determined to get better. It’s important. It’s very important, and we need it. We can’t go out and spend big bucks on free agents. That Marco and Callen be ready and have an impact is really important to us.”

Rossi started last season with the Wild, wasn’t ready and spent most of the rest of the season at Iowa. Addison was among the league’s leading rookie scorers and ran a successful power play. But his five-on-five (it was minus 17) left much to be desired, and because the coaching staff had ceased to trust him, he was essentially left out of the squad even before Klingberg was picked up.

His future is still up in the air.

The truth is, he hasn’t really caught on with the team, and while he has the potential to run a power play next year, it’s hard to see how he has a long future with the Wild with all the young defensemen in the system. If Guerin can give Addison a fresh start elsewhere this summer and the price is right, chances are he can be traded. And while the Wild has little central depth and it would seem far too quick to drop a 21-year-old pivot in Rossi, if Guerin can replace him with a first-round pick and start over effectively, he might be tempted.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that Rossi was No. 9 in 2020, and three young centers all playing at a high level have been chosen after him (Cole Perfetti with Winnipeg at No. 10, Anton Lundell of Florida at No. 12. and Seth Jarvis with Carolina at No. 13).

“I think the worst thing we could have done (with Rossi) is kind of force him into the line-up every night and that would hurt his development,” said Guerin. “I think he was in the best place he could be and that was in the NHL. He played a lot of minutes, he played every situation, he did exactly what he was asked to do. Marco will spend the better part of the summer here focusing on his fitness here rather than coming home, which is great.” He is a dedicated child.

“For someone like Marco – he’s a high-level pick, there’s a lot of talk about him, maybe some guys are playing from his draft now or something, but everyone develops at a different speed. We just have to make sure we do the right things for Marco as we go forward because we don’t want To put him in positions to fail, or to impede his development.”

On Addison, Guerin said: “He has the ability to be a better five-on-five and he should be and that should be his focus. You can’t just be a dedicated NHL player. He’s just too good. No place on the list.” Just for someone who is a specialist. So we know he has the ability. It’s just a matter of focusing on it and working on it. He’s still a young player and there’s more to do.”

Cover Area Calculation for Reaves, Gustavsson; Goligoski to be traded?

While Guerin says there’s no place on rosters for specialty players, he’s still interested in bringing back Reaves, who doesn’t play any special teams and has a hard time finding receivers willing to fight him anymore. But Guerin loves having Reaves on and off the ice and may feel his voice and energy will be invaluable to a team about to lose Dumba.

Reaves is hoping for a two-year deal, but the Wild would prefer to sign him on a one-year deal with some 35-plus performance bonuses.

It will also be interesting to see what happens with Alex Goligoski, who has one year left on his $2 million deal. He’s been scratched 36 times this season and six more in the playoffs, so he’s not entirely happy. If not in the Wild’s future plans, Guerin could potentially work with Goligoski to trade the veteran blueliner. If that happens, and Wild doesn’t keep the money, that would free up $2 million.

“Our meeting was short, and we’ll meet somewhere on the road here,” Guerin said.

The Wild is also interested in re-signing Iowa defenseman Dakota Mermes.

While it would be easy to re-sign Reaves if he accepted his salary of the current $1.75 million, Gustavsson would be complicated.

Depending on the term, he could command a contract north of $3 million annually.

The Wild will likely sign Mats Zuccarillo, Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartmann until they see how they perform next season.

“Man, how do we create more space?” Goren said. “But we have a guy like (Brock) Faber who makes less than a million dollars and we hope he keeps playing it. Things like that it’s going to be really important for us to have younger players in the squad or cheaper, or maybe a veteran guy with a cheaper number. But we may have to make some moves to create space. There are a number of ways we can do this.”

Gaudreau, Zuccarello and Kaprizov injury updates

Besides Joel Erickson’s fibula fracture that required surgery after Game 3 and Hartmann’s knee injury in Game 1, center Freddy Goudreau will undergo surgery to fix an abdominal problem that has been bothering him for four months, Guerin said.

If you remember, the night Goudreau signed a five-year, $10.5 million extension last month in Nashville, the NHL’s penalty kick leader (eight goals) scored twice but was suspended from the third period and penalty shootout for precautionary reasons even though he was like that. Goal of scoring 20 for the first time. It was obvious that Gaudreau was dealing with an injury in qualifying because he didn’t get on the skates before the game.

Also, Zuccarello was playing with a hip injury.

Guerin echoed what Kirill Kaprizov, who scored the Wild’s playoff goal but never scored again, said on Monday. The lower-body injury he sustained in March healed, but Kabrizov only played twice before the playoffs and never had a chance to get into a rhythm or get in proper form for a match.

Signing Johansson would likely end Nyquist’s comeback

The Wild, with such limited cap space, had to choose between Johansson and Nyquist and opted for Johansson on a reasonable two-year, $4 million contract on Tuesday. Nyquist would probably cost more, and there’s no denying Johansson’s chemistry with Poldy.

Fifteen of the youngster’s 31 goals came in Johansson’s 20 matches after he acquired him from Washington for a third-round pick.

“It’s great,” said Poldy. “You see how good he is. He’s quick, skilful, plays well in the D zone. He’s got everything, he’s got experience. He knows how to play. He’s a guy who taught me a lot and helped me in many ways too. Then you put it all together with him being a great guy.” also “.

In 20 games, Johansson scored six goals and 18 points, was a plus-6, and had five multi-point games and two game-winning goals. As of March 1, he led Minnesota in power-ups (five), ranked first in assists, second in scoring, and tied for third in goals and fifth in blocked shots (42). He added two goals in six playoff games, even though he was on the ice scoring 12 goals, six of them in penalty kicks.

When a healthy Johansson is a player who skates smoothly, skillfully and very intelligently.

“I felt great from day one,” Johansson said. “I loved it here last time (in 2020-21). It’s a great group of guys, staff and everything. A very interesting place to play, so I loved it.”

Critical Iowa coach, Minnesota assistants being evaluated

The coaching vacancy at the Iowa Wild is “huge,” Guerin said, especially because they will have six first- or sophomore linebackers next season along with Daemon Hunt, Ryan O’Rourke, Carson Lambos, Simon Johansson, Kyle Masters, and David Spacek.

“We’ll get there,” Guerin said.

Guerin was also non-committal about the future of the Wild’s assistant coaching staff. He said he evaluates all employees.

“I’m not close to anything right now,” he said. “I haven’t gotten into that yet. But our coaches are good. There’s been a lot for our special teams to do. They’ve been good in the regular season and … you have to give Dallas some credit for really good power play. So, that’s where I’m at.” in that. “

Khosnotdinov, Ugren and Yurov are waiting for you

A lot of players playing this long game have to do with young European strikers Marat Khosnotdinov, Liam Ogren and Danila Yurov, hopefully next summer. It is likely that Khosnotdinov, who has already played 139 matches in the regular season and playoffs in the KHL, will be ready to enter directly into the NHL by that time.

“We have some good young players in the system who will be here soon. And I think they will help,” said Guérin. “Honestly, I wish I could speed things up and get some of these kids over here now.”

Now that Ohgren’s Djurgardens has lost Game 7 and will not be promoted to the Swedish Premier League next season, Ohgren is a free agent and will likely sign with an actual Swedish Hockey League team. Then, the Wild officially loaned Ohgren to that team later this summer.

(Top photo by Marco Rossi: Steve Chambers/Getty Images)