EP Rinkside 2022 NHL Prospect Pool Rankings: No. 2-ranked Minnesota Wild

The Minnesota Wild are well-positioned for long-term success, a pair of dead cap charges on their Cap Friendly page notwithstanding. They have a young, exciting core driving their success, marked by back-to-back-to-back playoff appearances and a stable management team putting them in a position to succeed. And Judd Brackett's steady hand at the draft means that reinforcements will be forthcoming. 

You can already see the lagging indicators on that last front too, as evidenced by their standing as the NHL's second-best prospect pool, according to our team at EP Rinkside.

It's not often you see a Stanley Cup contender as well-armed with draft picks and blue-chip prospects as the Wild are. That sort of one-two punch of established NHLers and more high-end contributors on the horizon usually ends in confetti, parades, and nasty hangovers. Eventually, anyway.

Now, I mentioned that they’re in an enviable position, but it's not perfect. The decision to buy out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter means that they'll have cumulative dead cap charges as high as $14.8-million for another pair of seasons before it drops to a much more palatable $1.6-million for the three that follow. But once that’s over, it’ll be time to truly push the chips in on this group. It should time out exceptionally well with that young core entering its early prime, coupled with Kirill Kaprizov remaining one of the very best players in the world. 

But for now, let’s check out what makes this organization’s prospects so compelling.