After the Washington Capitals were unceremoniously bounced yet again from the Stanley Cup playoffs, I began to ponder the thought of number 77 in a Minnesota Wild jersey. What would it take? Like other Wild fans, I began scrambling to find the Wild’s salary cap information on Cap Friendly.
First, Oshie has many of the attributes that the Wild lack in their top-six forward group, so he’d probably be a great fit in the state of hockey. Oshie would add additional speed, toughness and goal scoring to the Wild’s lineup. During their series against the St. Louis Blues, the Wild were exposed. Many of the Wild’s forwards are perimeter players and don’t like to go to the blue paint to score goals. Players like Zach Parise and Eric Staal were the exception.
Make no mistake about it, Oshie isn’t going to come cheap. He’s probably due to receive a nice raise. In 68 game with the Capitals, Oshie scored 33 goals and 56 points, he was also a plus-28. During the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Oshie was second on the Caps in points with 4 goals and 12 points.
Looking at his statistics during the 2016-17 season, it was a career year for Oshie, he tied for the team lead in goals with Alex Ovechkin. Note: Oshie played 12 fewer games than Ovechkin.
According to Cap Friendly, Oshie is making $4,175,000. At the present moment, the Wild are $11,441,409 under the cap. The Wild have a few core players that they need to sign or cut bait. Oshie is 30 years old, so the Wild don’t want another long term, expensive over 30 free agent veteran (“a la” Dany Heatley or Thomas Vanek) that ends up having to be bought out or released. Not every free agent acquisition is going to turn out like Eric Staal.
Right now, it doesn’t sound like Oshie wants to leave Washington. Today, when asked about free agency Oshie said, “Right now I am Capital and I feel like that’s where I’ll be and if something changes, it changes.” A little later on in the interview he said, “He hasn’t thought about it all that much.”
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