Wild Add Sykora

A camp invite for Petr Sykora meant good things for both himself and the Minnesota Wild, the team that invited him. Within only a couple days of being invited and suiting up, Sykora has impressed enough to earn himself a 1-year deal, reportedly worth $1.6 million. The addition of Sykora is just another new face to a re-shaped Wild team, which I will hesitantly say is a little bit better than last year's version.

Sykora, 32, played in 76 regular season games for the Penguins in 2009, scoring 25 goals and 21 assists. In the Penguins' Cup run, Sykora didn't play as big of a role, only playing in seven games, registering a single assist.

Sykora joins Martin Havlat, Kyle Brodziak, Shane Hnidy and Wade Dubielewicz as the new major players in the Wild organization and could inject a little more offense in their game. The Northwest Division will be a much tougher division to play in again this coming season, so it will be interesting to see if the finesse of Sykora and Havlat can translate into some goals.

At a $1.6 million cap hit, Sykora not only fits into the team structure well as a player, but he fits underneath the cap ceiling, as the Wild now have 22 players signed on (see below) at a reasonable cost of $53.8 million, leaving $3 million for some flexibility.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Martin Havlat	Marek Zidlicky	Niklas Backstrom
Mikko Koivu	Brent Burns	Josh Harding
Andrew Brunette	Kim Johnsson	Wade Dubielewicz
Petr Sykora	Shane Hnidy
Pierre-Marc Bouchard	Greg Zanon
Owen Nolan	Nick Schultz
Antti Miettinen
Eric Belanger
Kyle Brodziak
James Sheppard
Cal Clutterbuck
Colton Gillies
Derek Boogaard

Sykora's low cap hit is also an interesting number when compared to other 25-goal scorers from last season. Those names include Ryan Getzlaf, Marc Savard, Joe Thornton, Patrick Kane, Keith Tkachuk and new teammate Owen Nolan. There is no question those players bring much more to the table than Sykora, but if Sykora can score 25+ goals again this season, he could still be considered a big bargain.

Well, Sykora will be a nice addition to the Wild going forward. By the news coming out of training camp, he's still got his hands working for him, so there should be some scoring out of that. He'll also fit quite nicely among the other Wild players on the Selection Sheet, which should be coming out soon.

Now, the question is, can Sykora score 25 goals in Minnesota? Well, he'll be hard pressed to do so, since he's not on a team which is built on offense anymore. Sykora didn't play much with Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin for extended periods of time, which is in his favour, but he'll likely end up on the Wild's second line, which means that there will be considerably more defense pressure put on him. I'm gonna wager that the $1.6 million may end up being about right. He won't bust at that price, but I have a hard time believing that he'll blow everyone away.