Best and Worst moves by the Wild

[Hockey Guy]

I had an interesting conversation with a couple co-workers today that I though would be a good topic. In your opinion, what are the three best and three worst moves the Wild have made over the last seven years? Keep in mind that you have to look at what we gave up to get certain players (i.e. Demitra for O’Sullivan). This is what I came up with:

Best Moves

Acquiring Rolston (#1 with a bullet)

Drafting Bouchard

Letting Manny go and bringing up Harding (I think Harding could be even better than Backstrom)

Worst Moves

Letting Brunette go (#1 with a bullet)

Letting Brunette go (again just because it was so stupid)

Letting Park go (I loved his energy)

[maros91]

Best

1. Drafting Gaborik

2. Always having great goaltending

3. Trading for Cliff Ronning the season the Wild made their run. (Got to love veteran leadership)

Worst

1. Signing Kim Johnsson to such a big deal. (2nd highest paid player on the team) For an offensive defenseman he only put up 3 goals last year.

2. Trading Willie Mitchell. I thought he was a great stay at home defenseman. Great on the penalty kill.

3. Not finding a center to play with Demitra and Gaborik.

[walleyes12]

I agree Biffle!!

Add one thing: Adding Brian Roloston, Great Player!!

[CNCMike]

In no particular order

Best:

Rolston

Backstrom

Koivu

Worst:

trading Brunnette

trading Mitchell

Hanging on to Darby as long as we did

[so haaad]

Cliff Ronning in a Wild Jersey. Wow, that brings back memories!

I'm pretty sure that Rolston and Demitra are both free agents after this year. It will be interesting to revisit this question next year at this time.

[maros91]

Free Agents after this season

Pavol Demitra

Brian Rolston

Wes Walz

Dominic Moore

Branko Radivojevic

Keith Carney

Nick Schultz

Petteri Nummelin

Sean Hill

Restricited Free Agents

Pierre-Marc Bouchard

Stephane Veilluex

Matt Foy

Kurtis Foster

Brent Burns

Sean Belle

Without resigning any of our restricted or unrestricted free agents the Wild have roughly 23.5 million in cap space. I would like to see the Wild make a run this year and maybe sign Peter Forsberg in December.

Oh yeah, Gaborik and Backstrom are unrestricted after next season.

[Hester]

Best moves

1. Building in St Paul

2. Building the Excel

3. Not throwing big money at washed up vets( not counting Carney)

[mudman]

worst moves

Johnsson he is horrible. flat out plug.

not adjusting to the "NEW" NHL their defense isn't good enough to go the distance

not picking up a key player after the lockout

BEST MOVES

getting rid of manny

signing Burns

signing Rolston

[Jill]

Just my female/occassional hockey follower perspective:

Best Moves

1. St. Paul location

2. Logo and Marketing - State of Hockey, etc.

Worst Moves (like most females I have more complaints than good things to say - ha!ha!)

1. Team colors - everybody looks like they are celebrating Christmas

2. Losing Mike Schmidt (National Anthem singer) - he rocked!

3. Letting Richard Park go - not the best player ever, but I liked watching him and he had a good work ethic.