Can the Wild Find Goals from the Anaheim Ducks roster?
The Minnesota Wild are looking for goals or, more to the point, players who score goals. We already covered the Wild’s roster in the first part of this 31-part series! You can see that at Chasing Goals on The Minnesota Wild.
One of the problems with “Chasing Goals” is every team is trying to do the same thing. No team wants to give up a goal-scorer when they find one so this is no easy task for the Minnesota Wild and General Manager Paul Fenton. That being said, we are going to point out some options available to the Wild on each NHL team and the only limit we’re going to put on those options is they have to be able to help the Wild score goals next season so they have to already be playing or, at least, played some games in the NHL. We may point out some prospects that look like they could help but it’s very difficult to judge what a player can do in the NHL based on stats from even the AHL let alone NCAA Hockey & the Canadian Junior Hockey Leagues. The Foreign leagues are usually even more difficult to judge because they are top professional leagues and the prospects are usually not playing top line minutes so their stats reflect that.
Next up is….the Anaheim Ducks because we didn’t know what order to go in so good, old alphabetical it is.
Ducks and Pucks
Looking at the current Anaheim Ducks roster, there are only a few players that stand out as players that could immediately help the Wild next season, Fs Jakob Silfverberg, Rikard Rakell and Daniel Sprong.
Jakob Silfverberg: 28-years-old; Contract: 5 years, $5.25M Cap Hit
2019 Stats: 24 goals, 19 assists in 73 games; Power Play: 3 G, 8 A
NHL Totals: 117 G, 135 A in 492 gms; Power Play: 17 G, 23 A
Also has 8 Goals & 5 Assists while Short-Handed | Highlights
- Doesn’t shoot enough and looks like a guy who scores goals but not really a pure goal-scorer.
Rikard Rakell: 26-years-old; Contract: 3 years, $3,789,444 Cap Hit
2019 NHL Stats: 18 goals, 25 assists in 69 games; Power Play: 6 G, 7 A
NHL Totals: 114 G, 127 A in 382 gms; Power Play: 25 G, 37 A
Highlights
- Now this is a guy who looks like a goal-scorer. He has a great shot and scores in different ways but loves the wrist shot from the Ovechkin spot. The contract is nice, too.
Daniel Sprong: 22-years-old; Contract: 1 year, $.75M Cap Hit (RFA)
2019 Stats: 14 goals, 9 assists in 63 games; Power Play: 2 G, 5 A
w/Pittsburgh: 0 goals, 4 assists in 16 games; Power Play: 0 G, 1 A
w/Anaheim: 14 goals, 5 asssts in 47 games; Power Play: 2 G, 4 A
NHL Totals: 18 G, 10 A in 89 gms; Power Play: 2 G, 5 A
Highlights
- Became a different player once he got to Anaheim. He started to shoot the puck. Likely was a bigger part of the team and made the most of it. He also scored 32 goals in 65 AHL games in 2017-18. Anaheim just traded for him last season so good luck prying him from their webbed feet.
Sam Steel: 21-years-old; Contract: 2 years, $863,333 Cap Hit
2019 Stats: 6 goals, 5 assists in 22 games; Power Play: 0 G, 2 A
AHL Totals: 20 G, 21 A in 53 gms; Power Play: 3 G, ? A
WHL Totals: 123 G, 215 A in 258 games
Highlights
- If the Wild feel the need to trade Zucker, these are the type of players they should be trying to acquire. Players who are still on their entry-level contracts so they are inexpensive and can be put in a position to succeed.
The Chase
The Wild could pursue a player like Daniel Sprong but as it says above, there is no reason the Ducks would make that trade. This would be like one of those fantasy hockey trades that you receive from someone all year long that doesn’t ever think about what the other team would get in the trade. Why trade for Jason Zucker and his $5.5M cap hit when they already have someone cheaper that could very well produce the same or maybe even more than Zucker next season.
Does that mean it can’t happen? No, but the trade would have to involve other pieces and the Wild probably don’t have the pieces to make that trade.
So…we’ll move on to the Arizona Coyotes next time but until then, let us know what you think about the players listed above for the Wild to chase and/or any other players you think we may have missed.
Let us know what you think in the comments or on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) &…ALWAYS…
