The Minnesota Wild may have a top line in mind, but they still have a glaring question to solve before the season gets rolling: who is going to handle the heavy minutes next to Kirill Kaprizov?
Danila Yurov and Max Shabanov are projected to skate with Kaprizov, but both are coming off rookie seasons in which they were not asked to carry consistent top-six loads. Yurov averaged 13 minutes, 18 seconds per game and cleared 15 minutes only 16 times in 73 appearances.
Shabanov was at 13:41 across 44 games. For a team with Stanley Cup aspirations, that kind of workload may be too light to lean on for long.
That is why Minnesota has been looking for a placeholder wing. The Wild already missed on Anders Lee and reportedly checked in on Patrik Laine, who is still a free agent. If Laine keeps holding out, Jonathan Drouin stands out as one of the few remaining options who can soak up minutes and fill a need without forcing a bigger commitment.
Drouin’s name comes with obvious baggage. After two productive seasons with the Colorado Avalanche, he signed a two-year deal with the New York Islanders and then struggled badly.
He was later included as a throw-in in the St. Louis Blues’ return for Brayden Schenn, and St.
Louis bought him out after only nine games. The Blues are now on the hook for $1.33 million just so he does not play for them.
The numbers from last season back up why he is still available. Drouin posted the eighth-worst negative impact among NHL forwards, according to Evolving-Hockey, with minus-2.1 Standings Points Above Replacement. He finished with four goals and 20 assists in 64 games.
Still, there is one thing Drouin can clearly do: play a lot. That matters for Minnesota, which has to replace not only the offense of Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Johansson, and Vladimir Tarasenko, but also their ice time. Zuccarello averaged 18:39 per game last season, Johansson was at 15:05, and Tarasenko logged 14:58.
Blake Coleman, who averaged 17:10 last year, would help if the Wild can add him to the mix. Even so, Minnesota would still only have six forwards who averaged at least 15 minutes last season: Coleman, Kaprizov at 22:09, Matt Boldy at 20:34, Joel Eriksson Ek at 19:05, Ryan Hartman at 16:45, and Bobby Brink at 15:10. Ideally, Hartman and Brink would be third-line pieces on a contender, not players being asked to cover too much ground.
The Wild may eventually solve the top-of-the-lineup issue closer to the trade deadline. For now, Drouin looks like the kind of stopgap they could use. He is a reclamation project, sure, but he has already been one that worked.
Colorado took a chance on him in the summer of 2023 on a deal worth $825,000, just $50,000 above the league minimum. That gamble paid off when he scored 19 goals and 56 points alongside Nathan MacKinnon. Even his second season in Colorado, when he made $2.5 million, was productive before injuries cut it short.
Drouin’s scoring has never fully matched his skill set, but among the free agents still on the board, he may be the best fit for one of Minnesota’s biggest open questions: who will get Kaprizov the puck?
For years, that answer was Zuccarello. His chemistry with Kaprizov and his playmaking made him the obvious setup man.
Now that spot is open, and neither Yurov nor Shabanov looks like a sure bet to fill it right away. Yurov was more of a net-front presence as a rookie, while Shabanov showed some passing ability in limited time with the Islanders, but that is a far cry from becoming the primary distributor for one of the NHL’s top scorers.
Drouin has long shown he can help elite players get the puck in dangerous spots. Skating with MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen at 5-on-5 was an ideal setup for a playmaker like him, but he still managed to play 18 minutes a night without dragging down the stars around him. He served as Colorado’s Marcus Johansson, and he could potentially do the same thing in Minnesota at a similar price point.
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