So…It was a Wild Wednesday on Draft Day #2!
The Wild began the day by trading F Luke Kunin & a 4th-round pick (101) to Nashville for C Nick Bonino & a 2nd-rounder (37) & a 3rd-rounder (70).
—Sad to see Kunin go as he looks like he’ll be a solid to very good NHL player for a long time. He’s a goal-scorer who plays a gritty game, likes to shoot the puck and he’s a leader on & off the ice but…you need to give something up to get something.
—Bonino is a center who won 2 Stanley Cups with Bill Guerin when they were both with Pittsburgh so Bill knows him well and knows what he’ll bring to this team. The picks are possibly the bigger part of this deal, though. They gave the Wild a chance to take some better prospects to add to their system and that will only help them in the future.
On to the picks, their 1st pick couldn’t have worked out any better as a projected future #1 center fell to them and it was the guy they wanted from the get go at #9 in Ontario Hockey League & Ottawa 67’s F Marco Rossi. That was yesterday.
Today, they grabbed another center with the 37th pick in Russian C Marat Khusnutdinov (Kuz-na-dee-noff), a player with speed, “hands and playmaking ability that can’t be taught.” He’s playing for SKA St. Petersburg in the Kontinental Hockey League this season or, at least, he has. He’s listed as playing 2 games with no points so far but he has 2 goals & 5 assists in 8 games with their minor-league club after scoring 13 goals & 25 assists last season with them. He has this year & next year remaining on his KHL contract but is eager to come over & play in MN. He’s still only 18-year’s-old.
The Wild used their own 2nd-round pick to select D Ryan O’Rourke, captain of the Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds, a 2-way defenseman that plays a tough & gritty game.
The Wild then traded the 70th pick to move up to 65 so they could select another nice 2-way defenseman in D Daemon Hunt from the Moose Jaw Warriors Hockey Club of the Western Hockey League. He had a rough 2019-20 season due to getting his arm cut with a skate and missing almost 3 months because of it. He needed 25 stitches just to stop the bleeding then had surgery a week later to repair the muscle. The best story we heard about Hunt, and this might tell you what kind of competitor he is, was when his team lost and it was the opponent’s goalie’s 1st win so when a couple of the other team’s players came to get the puck, he threw it into the stands. Haha! Beauty!
The Minnesota Wild were not supposed to pick until the 6th round at pick 163 then again in the 7th at pick 194 but they packaged those 2 picks to move up to 146 to select RW Pavel Novak, a 1st-year rookie with the Kelowna Rockets of the WHL who scored 25 goals & 58 points in 55 games last season, which is similar production to Wild prospect Adam Beckman when he was a rookie. They expect a similar jump in production from Novak this season.
That seems like a heckuva draft and a heckuva day for the Minnesota Wild but only time will tell how good it turns out to be and if the trade for Bonino has the kind of effect Guerin is looking for on the Wild’s culture. Any player who has won a Cup has to have an instant on the team.
After the draft, Bill Guerin said the only spot they have to really worry about in free agency is in goal so…who will they pursue when Friday’s #FreeAgentFrenzy begins? A lot of people are thinking Marc-Andre Fleury who you would assume won’t be able to stay in Vegas after they signed G Robin Lehner to a brand new 5-year/$25M contract a few days ago.
We’ll let you know all of #TheClutter as it happens, ya ‘Puckers! Let us know what you thought about the Wild’s draft, though!
Quotes & player scouting reports taken from this Wild article:
https://www.nhl.com/wild/news/2020-draft-day-two-recap-100720/c-319370998
AND…here’s a nice Video Playlist from #WildTV on the weekend, the draft, trades and the offseason. https://www.nhl.com/wild/video/t-277437412
THANK YOU for reading…and…don’t forget…
