Granlund Agrees in Minnesota

Once the Minnesota Wild got the ball rolling with Nino Niederreiter's contract over the weekend, it looks like that math was really working out for them as they took care of Mikael Granlund on Tuesday afternoon, signing him to a new deal as well.

Granlund, 25, signed a 3-year, $17.25 million deal, which works out to be a $5.75 million cap hit for each season and it will buy the Wild one of his unrestricted free agent years as well.

The Finn had a breakout year in 2017, scoring 26 goals and 69 points, playing in 81 games for the Wild, which was good enough to be 33rd overall in hockey pool scoring, 19th among all forwards.  If he was taken in the draft, according to the rankings, the Wild forward would have been a 2nd round pick.

As we saw with the Niederreiter signing on Sunday, the Wild are doing well to round out their roster, ahead of training camp and getting these signings done is a huge relief for management, as their two big remaining restricted free agents won't linger unsigned into camp.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Zach Parise	7.538	Ryan Suter	7.538	Devan Dubnyk	4.333
Mikko Koivu	6.750	Jared Spurgeon	5.188	Alex Stalock	0.650
Mikael Granlund	5.750	Jonas Brodin	4.167
Nino Niederreiter	5.250	Matt Dumba	2.550
Tyler Ennis	4.600	Kyle Quincey	1.250
Eric Staal	3.500	Mike Reilly	0.725
Charlie Coyle	3.200	Ryan Murphy	0.700
Jason Zucker	2.000
Chris Stewart	1.150
Luke Kunin	0.925
Joel Eriksson Ek	0.894
Christoph Bertschy	0.776
Landon Ferraro	0.700
Cal O'Reilly	0.700

With the signing and replacing one of the young prospects on the list from Sunday, it now leaves the Wild with $1.67 million of unused cap space, with Marcus Foligno still yet to be signed.  The Wild may still need to find some space somewhere to get Foligno under contract, but we shall see.  It looks like Minnesota will be nestled up tight to the ceiling this season, regardless.