2 Offseason Additions Wild Should Make With Limited Cap Space

The Minnesota Wild have one final year of dealing with over $12 million in buyout penalties of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise and have managed to stay relatively competitive throughout the entire time. A lot went wrong this season for the Wild, but even though there are young players coming in and hopefully making impacts, there is a little money left to spend on upgrades for 2024-25.

The Wild are going to be moving on from a few depth defensemen and could really use one solid defender to come in and shore the third pairing up. This shouldn't just be someone the team is okay with healthy scratching at times though. This should be an everyday defender. The team should force Declan Chisholm, Jon Merrill, and Zach Bogosian compete for playing time.

A defenseman to play the left side would be better, but I don't think the Wild will be too picky with limited cap space. As for top targets in free agency, I put forth Ian Cole, Ilya Lyubushkin, Alexandre Carrier, Jani Hakanpaa, and Derek Forbort as defensemen who fit that role needed.

The other area the Wild should use the rest of their cap space on is a bottom-6 forward. Liam Ohgren may not be ready and the Wild could use an actual NHL player to fall back on and play more if Marat Khusnutdinov struggles to adjust in a full season. There will be plenty of options that may come for cheap after the initial signing phase of free agency passes or right away if the Wild like someone.

Some good targets that could do well in the bottom-6 of Minnesota are Tyler Johnson, Victor Olofsson, Jack Roslovic, Warren Foegele, and Daniel Sprong to name a few.

I think the Wild will be a little bit better than this season and stay in the hunt for a playoff spot, but will find it difficult for one more year to get to the postseason. To be using as much cap space as the team is on nothing helping the team hurts and the Wild will need for a lot of players to really step up if they are going to return to the playoffs.