Pool Outlook for Minnesota

The Minnesota Wild will be working with a new coach and a new GM for the 2010 season, which means that the team is sort of in limbo when it comes to expectations this season. The team does start again with a reasonable core of players, which should make the transition a little bit easier for the new staff, but the team did finish out of the playoffs, so there is plenty of work that needs to be done. As a poolie, the Wild are another one of those wild card teams that are going to be tough to read without any results behind them.

If there is one player the Wild can count on is Niklas Backstrom, who signed a brand-new deal during the year, that will keep him in the Wild crease for another four seasons. Backstrom finished the year as the Wild's top fantasy player in the pool rankings, finishing 11th with 37 wins and 8 shuouts for 90 points. This makes back-to-back seasons in the top 50 of pool rankings, which should make him a bonafide pick early in your draft. I'm not sure I would take him in the first round this coming year, since his points is in correlation to the Wild play, which is a question mark, but he should be good for 25-30 wins despite any changes.

Up front in 2009, the Wild had to be pleased with Mikko Koivu, who jumped up to 57th in the pool rankings, with a 67-point effort in the year. Koivu took over as Minnesota's go-to guy, as Marian Gaborik only managed to play in 17 games in 2009 (still scoring 23 points). The Wild also saw reasonable (but not clutch) productions from Andrew Brunette (50 points in 80 GP) and Pierre-Marc Bouchard (46 points in 71 GP), obth of which were down in the rankings. If Owen Nolan had a healthier season, he could have been a huge help to make a playoff push, sadly he missed 23 games in a season where he scored 25 goals.

The defense generally saw drops in production across the board or else it was just too low to begin with. If there is some good news on the Minnesota back-end, it's that they saw the return of Kurtis Foster to the line-up, late in the year, from a horrifying broken leg. Foster played 10 games before the season was through and he registered 6 points. You may want to make a note of him for later.

2010 Season Outlook
Well, despite a few names on the list for the 2010 team, the outlook may remain cloudy for a little while. Without any coaching or management in place, likely until the Draft, we won't see much sunshine on the horizon for the Wild.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Mikko Koivu	Marek Zidlicky	Niklas Backstrom
Andrew Brunette	Brent Burns
Pierre-Marc Bouchard	Kim Johnsson
Owen Nolan	Nick Schultz
Antti Miettinen
Eric Belanger
James Sheppard
Cal Clutterbuck
Colton Gillies
Derek Boogaard

The new management will have to contend with some key free agents this summer as well, but their budget won't be too bad. The 15 players listed above do come with a cap hit of approximately $41.6 million, but they will have to dance around some free agents and some big money, potentially heading out the door.

The big name that's potentially hitting the market out of Minnesota is Marian Gaborik. I am truly wondering if the Wild are now waiting to see what the salary cap number is before they go back out to negotiations, just to make sure they know how much they can give Gaborik. Also on the UFA front, the Wild will also have to contend with Marc-Andre Bergeron, Martin Skoula and Kurtis Foster on the blueline.

On the RFA front, goaltender Josh Harding may be dangled at the Entry Draft for something tasty in return, as he will be looking to get a raise without gaining any more starts with the team. Harding is far and away the biggest fish on the radar for the Wild, which keeps this paragraph rather small.

The Wild have a pretty poorly stocked stable of young talent, in my opinion. New management's biggest job will be to replenish the stable a little bit, as there doesn't look like there will be much help coming up from the minor or junior ranks this coming year. Anton Khudobin, a Kazakh goaltender, may make the jump as the Wild's back-up after a good year in the ECHL, but don't make any sudden moves adding him as a goalie on your team just yet.

Beyond the obvious in Minnesota, this team will be hard to choose from come fantasy draft day. I also have a hard time believing that they will make the playoffs next season, unless the new coaching staff has an immediate rapport with the team that is already in place. This is a wait-and-see team, which has some potential, but not very much. Wait on Backstrom, wait on Gaborik, wait on Koivu... see where Foster goes and get him relatively high. There you have it.