Minnesota Wild Hold Top Prospects Out of Action at Rookie Tournament
The Minnesota Wild are about to enter the first of three consecutive seasons where the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter will eat up a good amount of cap space. The Wild will have just under $13M in dead cap space this season and almost $15M in the following two seasons. That led to the Wild trading Kevin Fiala to the LA Kings and being forced to rely on veterans taking league minimum deals and entry-level contracts. Two of those players the wild will be relying on are 2020 and 2021 first round picks Marco Rossi and Jesper Wallstedt.
Both Rossi and Wallstedt were apart of the Wild's Rookie Tournament roster, but were held out of the final game of the tournament to prevent any risk of injury leading into Wild training camp which begins Wednesday. Rossi will surely slot into the Wild's top six while Wallstedt will battle Filip Gustavsson for the backup role behind future Hall of Famer Marc-Andre Fleury. As much as the Wild would have liked to get Wallstedt and Rossi into as many games as possible during the tournament, given their cap crunch, they made the right decision to keep them out of the lineup. They will both see plenty of action during pre-season games.
Previously on MapleLeafsDaily
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