Wild Could’ve Made Mistake In Marco Rossi Trade – Wilderness Walk

In the middle of the trade rumors swirling around Marco Rossi before he signed his three-year deal with the Minnesota Wild, a very specific deal was mentioned as a possibility and apparently, it had legs.

With winger JJ Peterka also having an issue settling on a contract with his own team as a restricted free agent, it was floated amongst some fans and media members that a one-for-one deal of Rossi-for-Peterka could go down. The young Austrian center would solve some issues at the top of the Sabres lineup after moving Dylan Cozens and getting an inconsistently healthy Josh Norris back; and the German winger could be a third hyper-offensive scoring threat alongside Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy in the lineup.

The concept of this trade appeared again on an episode of The Sheet this week as Jeff Marek and his guest Pierre McGuire discussed it — and even went so far as to say that they “heard” about that potential trade from other people.

And looking back, it certainly feels. like it would’ve been a massive mistake. While it wouldn’t be a perfect comparison financially, but considering that Peterka eventually signed a sizeable five-year contract with a cap hit of $7.7 million and what the Wild ended up signing Rossi for, the Wild would’ve made a grave error if that deal went down. In Rossi you get stability, a scorer that is at worst giving you 50 or so points and at-best could be a point-per-game player at the top of your lineup who is impacting the game in all three zones. A very Minnesota Wild-esque forward.

But in Peterka, he’s almost the opposite. Taking advantage of shooting percentages skyrocketing at the right time, not really effective at all if he’s not in the offensive zone; it feels like it could’ve been a disaster and nowhere near the comfortable reliability that Rossi provides.

Maybe we’re out to lunch, but the Wild are a much better team with not having pulled that hypothetical (or not) trigger.

That’s Wild

• We’ve gotten to know how Bill Guerin handles contract negotiations during his time as Wild general manager. So, which Guerin are we going to see as he tries to keep Kirill Kaprizov in Minnesota? [Hockey Wilderness]
• The Wild celebrate all the community impact they had in Minnesota. [NHL.com]

Off the trail…

• This seems like an exercise you would do if you were very bored and needed to kill an afternoon: The best player in every draft pick position, from first overall all the way to 224th. [ESPN]
• Sidney Crosby is continuing to inspire members of Team Canada ahead of the Olympics. [TheScore]

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