After a flurry of mostly unexpected moves, the Minnesota Wild have me absolutely stoked about the upcoming season...as well as seasons to come. By trading away All-Star D Brent Burns and RW Marty Havlat to the San Jose Sharks for snipers Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi, as well as top prospect C Charlie Coyle, the Wild have seriously upgraded their offensive talent. The Wild ended up last year being last in the league in shots per game at 26.2, and they were 26th in the league in scoring, so some punch was needed. Heatley and Setoguchi will be teaming with Mikko Koivu, Matt Cullen, Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Guillaume Latendresse, likely in some combination of the first two lines and that should give us two REALLY nice scoring lines to compete with. Losing Burns' offensive punch from the defensemen will be felt, because other than D Marek Zidlicky, there won't be any other offense coming from the D, but then again, as much as Burns added, he often got caught pinching too much, leading to two-on-ones going the other way, so I think, overall, we've added some net plusses!! We did lose G Jose Theodore to the Florida Panthers, but we did re-sign G Josh Harding, so we should be pretty well covered in the nets. Not to mention adding D Jonas Brodin and scoring C Zack Phillips in the draft, to go along with last years home run of draft picks of C Mickael Granlund, LW Brett Bulmer, C Johan Larsson, and F Jason Zucker,.....this team is pointed in the right direction...NO QUESTION!!!!
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