Dan Wallace: Roster Trimmed Mayhew, Sturm, Stafford Out

With Brown and Rask they might as well cut their losses and send them to Iowa. I'd rather have Sturm up here pushing Kunin to Wing and Foligno to the pressbox as the 13th forward.

Personally i think Foligno has carved out a nice little niche for himself on the Wild roster. This line up needs a few bigger sized tougher forwards... Cripes, as it is now it's a fairly diminutive line up north of the blue line.

Personally i think Foligno has carved out a nice little niche for himself on the Wild roster. This line up needs a few bigger sized tougher forwards... Cripes, as it is now it's a fairly diminutive line up north of the blue line.
- MnGump

Their average height is above 6 feet as a team... I just think all around they need more scoring and speed. They're slow up the middle with the exception of Kunin and aside from a couple of guys not that fast on the wing either. Kunin isn't a natural center and if it came down to him or Foligno, I'd take Kunin every time. Sturm looks like a player. I'd like him to spend time on the 4th line developing, that way EK can play 2nd line and we can see what we actually have in him.

Wild need to cut JT Brown. After that stunt he pulled at the end of last season, I am surprised the Wild even kept him this off season with a personality like that. He embarrassed the team. Not to mention, HE BLOWS DOGS FOR QUARTERS!

Well, Brown is gone now, so you should be happy about that. And it looks like Rask is staying on the roster. After reading all the discussions about whether Rask should be with the Wild or down in Iowa, I have to agree that keeping him on the roster with the Wild is the correct thing to do. I do believe both Sturm and Mayhew deserve spots on the Wild roster, but I would want them playing and the probably wouldn't be happening that often. So it's best they get the chances to play top minutes in Iowa and keep developing.

I do see a chance (though somewhat very, very slim) that the Wild deal 1 or 2 of the LWs in the first part of the season to try and find a top C. In the best of worlds, you could say something like Donato, JEE and Rask would be a combo. Not that I can think of a team that would want to trade away a #1 C for that group. I figure BG will trade and unload Rask somewhere this year, or else buy him out after the season. That buyout would give them $2.67 mil in cap space for the first 2 years, then would be $1.33 against the cap for years 3 and 4. I think that is an acceptable loss in cap space if moving on from Rask this year. But for Rask to fail the skating test at training camp...twice...doesn't bode well for him. And the 2 times I have seen him in pre-season games, he has looked terrible. Might be best for him to just dump whatever apartment he has right now and just move into the pressbox area, because that is where he should be for the entire season. Even if someone gets hurt...at C Sturm will be called up, at W, Mayhew will be called up.

And honestly, I can't wait to see the Foligno/Eriksson Ek/Hartman line. I think that is going to be a fun line to watch this season.

And I see that Belpedio was sent to Iowa now as well. I wonder if this is to actually have a two-fold effect. Keeping Soucy up here to light a fire under Seeler (pretty close to the same type of players, just Seeler will a tad stronger and Soucy is a tad better offensively) and get him fired up. Secondly, Belpedio probably is in the longer term plans of the Wild, so letting him play everyday at top pairing minutes in Iowa whereas Soucy will be more of a pressbox, unless Hunt is not being used. Guess this does mean that Pateryn starts the season on the DL.