Wild Rumors: Minnesota To Be Really Aggressive Moving Forward

The Minnesota Wild have a great mix of veterans, talented players in or about to reach their prime, and young players/prospects. This wasn't a team that was quite ready to go out and acquire a lot of the players that were available and on the market this offseason, but Frank Seravalli said that we should look for the Wild to be a really aggressive team moving forward.

Minnesota currently has $10 million in projected cap space to still spend this summer, but a good chunk of that will likely end up going to Marco Rossi. The young center is looking for money close to Matt Boldy, around $7 million AAV long-term, while the Wild want to keep it around $5 million AAV.

Not only is upcoming season one that is important for the Wild to be competitive, there are a number of key contracts ending next summer that the team will have to make decisions on. I think Kirill Kaprizov, Filip Gustavsson, and Mats Zuccarello are pretty easy decisions and the Wild will want them to stick around, but money from Vladimir Tarasenko, Zach Bogosian, and a decision on Marcus Johansson will need to be made.

I think Rossi will end up somewhere between the two numbers he and the team want and Kaprizov/Gustavsson are going to get significant raises while Zuccarello's money drops. With the cap going up and the young players like Zeev Buium, David Jiricek, Jesper Wallstedt, Liam Ohgren, and Danila Yurov all set to make an impact, the team is in perfect position to make a push and become real Stanley Cup contenders.

The Wild have been waiting for the space and opportunity to spend bigger, and now that the buyout hits of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise are reduced by a lot, this is their chance. While it has been impressive that the team has been able to stay competitive through this, there are no more excuses and big things are expected from the Wild over the next full year.