An important piece of the Minnesota Wild\u2019s future offense is officially under contract as of Monday night.<\/p>\n
The team announced that Rosemount native Charlie Stramel is an employee of the Wild, after signing a three-year entry level contract reportedly worth $3.2 million with his home state NHL team.<\/p>\n
Stramel, 21, was the Wild\u2019s first round pick, 21st overall, in the 2023 NHL Draft and has played the past two seasons at Michigan State. Although he suffered a broken ankle early in Michigan State\u2019s overtime loss to Wisconsin in the regional final and is not expected to be available for the Wild this season.<\/p>\n
After playing youth hockey in Rosemount and skating for Rosemount High School as a sophomore, Stramel spent his final two seasons of junior hockey with USA Hockey\u2019s National Team Development Program in Michigan. He began his college career at Wisconsin and was a Badger for two uneven seasons before transferring to Michigan State. He had played for Spartans coach Adam Nightingale when they were both with USA Hockey and Stramel\u2019s game took off with the Spartans.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, he grew up. Body maturity and trusting that it\u2019s not a rat race. Just because you were a first round pick doesn\u2019t mean you have to jump to the NHL at 19 years old,\u201d said Paul Caponigri, a Big Ten Network and ESPN hockey analyst who played at Ohio State. \u201cHe trusted Nightingale to help him. Last year he built confidence, and this year he was like, \u2018I\u2019m the big dog,\u2019 and became a Type A kind of guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a senior for the Spartans, he posted 44 points in 37 games. An All-Big Ten first team selection and a top 10 finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, Stramel played a key role in the Spartans winning the last two conference titles. Attending development camp in St. Paul during the summer of 2024, Stramel spoke of how patient and encouraging the Wild organization had been as he worked to find his game in college.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been super supportive,\u201d Stramel said after a skate at TRIA Rink. \u201cEvery step of the way \u2013 player development, management \u2013 they\u2019ve been super supportive getting me back to the player they drafted and the player I want to be at the next level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stramel also skated for Team USA in the 2022 and 2023 World Juniors. He could have become a free agent later this summer had Stramel chosen not to sign with the Wild, but the appeal of a return to his home state was strong. He has been assigned jersey number 15 in Minnesota, which is what he wore with the Spartans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An important piece of the Minnesota Wild\u2019s future offense is officially under contract as of Monday night. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,38,4,43,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-544790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota-wild","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116361206625883571","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544790","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=544790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}