Wild Roster Moves Leave Promising Look to Upcoming Season

Well Wild fans, you all got your wish, and at a discounted price at that. Thomas Vanek has come "home" for the next three seasons to play with the Minnesota Wild. Although Vanek was the only real big splash the Wild made in the off-season thus far, they are working on resigning much of their young talent by the start of the upcoming season.

However, with new signings come people losing a spot on the roster. Among the losses are Dany Heatley, much to the joy of the Wild fans, and Clayton Stoner both going to the Anaheim Ducks. Heatley was just a thorn in the Minnesota Wild's salary cap and with him gone a lot of room opened up. With Stoner, however, the wild lose 2/3 of the grit they had in the line-up, the other third going to Matt Cooke.

If there is a road block in the upcoming season for the Wild, I think this is the spot to have it. Yes, they will have guys who like to hit some, like Matt Dumba and Keith Ballard, but there won't be that one guy who will drop the gloves when the team needs a kick start or protection from an opposing teams enforcer. If push came to shove, I'm sure Ballard or Brodziak would drop the gloves if absolutely needed, but I think it's still not enough.

The other big question is with the goaltending. People keep asking me why we didn't buy out Backstrom's contract, but due to him being injured at the end of the season, by NHL rule, they were not allowed to. So Backstrom is here to stay, for now. Now Josh Harding. He was having a Veznia Trophy type first half until he was sidelined by a change to his MS medications and didn't play for the rest of the season. Harding is expected to be in training camp come September and is expected to be on the opening day roster come October barring any setbacks. Finally, we have rookie sensation,

Darcy Kuemper and Ilya Bryzgalov. Bryz is not getting signed, as I'm sure much of you probably figured out after the season was over. As for Kuemper, he is still an unsigned restricted free agent and looking like he might be going into arbitration to come to terms on a new contract with the Wild. So who is going to be number one on opening night? I'd put money on Josh Harding with Kuemper as his back-up. Backstrom is the thrid goalie on roster, but remains a healthy scratch.

Now, the rest of the roster. With the additions made, and with who is returning for the upcoming season, I think that the Wild will have one of the most feared rosters in the NHL. All four forward lines have speed and the potential to score, especially with a healthy Zucker, and a returning Fontaine to solidify an already potent roster of wingers. Up the middle of the ice Minnesota still has the three Finish centers, Captain Mikko Koivu, Mikael Granlund, and rookie sensation Erik Haula. I'd say that those three have a solidified roster spot this season, but as for the fourth center who knows. You have to start with the veteran Kyle Brodziak, but if his game starts to slip in his fourth line role, its still nice to have a couple of options. Recently signed Jordan Schroeder would likely be a good fit on the fourth line as well, and probably is the odd man out as of right now, but you can always slide Charlie Coyle to the center spot and call up another recent signing in Brett Sutter to play on the wing.

The defensive core will be a little easier to keep track of this upcoming season. Your top line will still be Brodin and Suter. Spurgeon likely plays with Scandella and Ballard likely plays with the young Matt Dumba to start the season

. After that, there is Jonathan Blum waiting for his chance to slide back into the line-up and another former Golden Gopher signing, Stu Bickel, waiting right after him. I don't see much change in how things operated back here from last season, but I would like to see a little less of the load put on Suter's shoulders. Will it happen? Probably not, but if he gets cut to around 25 minutes per game, I think he could produce as well as Shea Webber, or Duncan Keith.

Here is how the opening day line-up will look like in my opinion:

Parise-Granlund-Pominville
Vanek-Koivu-Coyle
Cooke-Haula-Niederreiter
Zucker-Brodziak-Fontaine

Suter-Brodin
Scandella-Spurgeon
Ballard-Dumba

Harding
Kuemper

Scratches:
Almond, Backstrom, Sutter, Blum, Bickel, Schroder, and Veilleux

This is an opening day line-up, I think, can be rivaled to any line-up in the entire NHL. I think this is the year that the Minnesota Wild are finally considered as one of the elite teams in the NHL, provided that they stay healthy. This season is looking very promising for the boys in red and green, and could be one Minnesotans have been waiting for for a very long time.

Parise and Suter signings didn't go unnoticed

I don’t think that anyone one is going to feel sorry for the NHL owners during the upcoming CBA negotiations when they say we’re broke and we can’t afford to play these big exuberant salaries anymore… Seriously! No one is going to feel sorry for the owners – especially after the Minnesota Wild’s owner signed two players for a total of 196 million dollars. I just don’t see there being a lot of empathy – especially for the Wild owner Craig Leipold.

I would imagine that the players have been watching these players’ signings as well.

Michael Russo, Star Tribune --- Leipold responded Monday, saying, "Listen: We've been losing money and the way we were going, we were going to have another year of 'keep losing more money and more money and more money.' So if I'm going to make the kind of financial commitment to keep this team and move this forward, I'd rather do it growing it.

"Ultimately that was the decision. As a result of this move, it's not going to cause us to be financially stable. I believe it will be within a year or two. This is a move to get us out of the hole that we've been digging. And as I spoke with some other owners in the league as to why I did it, they totally get it. They understand it. At some point you have to make that kind of commitment in order to turn your franchise around. If we didn't, then we would just keep losing more going forward without any plan of changing it."

Ironically, the day after the spending spree, Leipold was one of the owners who sat in the bargaining session between the NHL and NHL Players' Association in New York. The league has moved to terminate the collective bargaining agreement and negotiate another. The current agreement expires Sept. 15, and the league is in danger of a lockout. In 2004-05, the season was wiped out because of a lockout.

The hockey world has been a buzz since the big signing in Minnesota and you can bet that executive director of the National Hockey League Players Association Donald Fehr took note of the signing as well.

The owners want to move to a 50/50 revenue split; currently the players are at 57-43 revenue split. If the players are to accept the 50/50 number would mean that means the players are going to have their salaries rolled back. This could end up being a long fight especially with the recent signing in the NHL during free agency.