Shrewd Move Brings Kobasew to Minnesota

The Minnesota Wild have acquired forward Chuck Kobasew from the Boston Bruins in exchange for Craig Weller, Alex Fallstrom, and a second round pick in 2011, and I am just tickled pink about this trade.

In reading up about what the opinion on this trade was, I read a line that said the Wild were mortgaging the future, and I just about spit my soda out all over my keyboard.

With this trade, the Wild has effectively ended the Craig Weller experiment, dropping his $625,000 salary. They traded a second round pick in 2011. Two years down the road.  General Manager Chuck Fletcher’s thought in this was that two years is more than ample time to regain a second round pick.

Given that the player and the pick were really a throw away, this trade essentially is Kobasew for Fallstrom.

Now, as has been mentioned, Fallstrom could certainly go on to become the next Tomas Holmstrom. But Fallstrom is, at the very least, three years away from even getting a pro contract. That doesn’t help a team getting very thin up front right now.

The bottom line is that this trade is a great one for the organization.

Did Fletcher overpay for Kobasew?

Absolutely. But he wasn’t dealing from a position of power. There was no way that Fletcher was going to make out like a bandit in any trade at this point in the season, and he knew it. All he could do is hope to mitigate his losses, which he did in a big way.

It was very apparent that Weller wasn’t going to be getting the call from the big squad anytime soon, especially not with Derek Boogaard and John Scott in the lineup. Weller was languishing down in Houston, and was a burden on the books. 

A second round pick, two years down the road, isn’t something that Wild fans should fret over either. By the time the 2011 Entry Draft rolls around, the draft landscape will look much different than it does now, and I would imagine the Wild may have at least one pick in that round.

So, in the grand scheme of things, all the Wild really gave up was Fallstrom.

They didn’t lose Nick Leddy. They didn’t lose Tyler Cuma, or Marco Scandella, or Matt Hackett, or Cody Almond.

The team lost last year’s fourth round pick for a player that will be able to fill some gaping holes on our roster

That, my friends, isn’t mortgaging the future.

That is shrewd management.