{"id":453605,"date":"2026-02-10T20:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T20:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/453605\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T20:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T20:21:15","slug":"minnesota-wild-still-very-interested-in-upgrading-one-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/453605\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Wild Still Very Interested In Upgrading One Position"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ryan<\/a>Though the Minnesota Wild<\/a> have made the biggest addition of the season (LA close with Artemi Panarin now) with Quinn Hughes, they are still interested in upgrading further. Their forward group isn’t where they want it to be, and by trading for Hughes, they sent Marco Rossi and Liam Ohgren to the Vancouver Canucks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Wild have had some solid performances this season by unexpected players and have a competent top-6, but definitely need more if they’re going to compete with the likes of the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche just to get out of their division.<\/p>\n

Pierre LeBrun said, “I would say post-Olympics, keep an eye on the Wild as they try to go out and get a center, because they really really want to get that done.”<\/p>\n

Right now, the Wild are running Ryan Hartman, Joel Eriksson Ek, Danila Yurov, and Nico Sturm. I think they are most comfortable with Eriksson Ek and Sturm in the spots they’re playing, but Yurov can be shifted to the wing and so can Hartman, if he even sticks around past a trade the Wild are going to make.<\/p>\n

The center doesn’t have to be a pure number one center, because that is really tough to find, but he does have to be a top-6, and there are a few out there that can be an upgrade over Hartman between Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello.<\/p>\n

Hartman has 14 goals and 26 points in 54 games this season and averages 16:41 of ice time per game. Minnesota is looking for more than that as he’s on the second power-play unit when everyone is healthy and doesn’t kill penalties. He wouldn’t be bad in a third line center role if the Wild can swing that, but they are going to continue to be in the mix for any top-6 center that could be an upgrade during the short time between the NHL players returning to action from the Olympics and the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Photo credit:\u00a0\u00a9 John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though the Minnesota Wild have made the biggest addition of the season (LA close with Artemi Panarin now)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,181,161,38,5280,4,465,550,106,60,107,549,548,546,547,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-453605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-hockey-news","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-wild","12":"tag-minnesotawild","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-nhl-draft","15":"tag-nhl-free-agency","16":"tag-nhl-news","17":"tag-nhl-playoffs","18":"tag-nhl-rumors","19":"tag-nhl-teams","20":"tag-nhl-trade-deadline","21":"tag-nhl-trade-rumors","22":"tag-nhl-trades","23":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116048199252794476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}