The Wild will look different for the rest of the season, with the team acquiring future Hall of Famer and current Vezin Trophy winner Marc-André Fleury from the Blackhawks on Monday before the NHL trade deadline.
The deal cost the Wild a conditional first-round pick in the 2022 draft, which would turn into a second-round pick if the Wild didn’t make it to the Western Conference Finals and Fleury didn’t score four or more wins in the first two rounds.
The Blackhawks also kept half of Fleury’s salary. He will become an unrestricted free agent after the season and waived a no-trade clause to ease the deal.
Fleury will support Cam Talbot at the Wild on Monday night when the team faces the Golden Knights at the Xcel Energy Center.
Marc-André Fleury career statistics
“They’re made for the playoffs,” Fleury said at a press conference after arriving. “I’m happy to be here with a team that should be in the playoffs with a chance to win.”
In a separate deal, the team sent goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen and a 2022 fifth-round pick (originally from San Jose) to the Sharks in exchange for left-back Jacob Middleton.
Wild general manager Bill Guerin, who played with Fleury on the Stanley Cup winner, said Talbot was one of the first people to approach Fleury.
“I was a little worried about chemistry…because it went really well this year,” Guerin said. “But all of them can help our team and I’m so confident in the group we already have that they’ll be happy with these guys.
“I know Flower. I know him well. And I know what he’s capable of.”
The Wild also traded center Victor Rusk to Seattle for the future, paying 50 percent of his remaining contract, and assigned forward Connor Dewar to the American Hockey League on paper to give Dewar the right to return to Iowa; Dewar remains with the Wild using one of the team’s four available recalls until the end of the season.
Fleury, 37, is 19-21-5 averaging 2.95 goals and .908 shooting percentage this season with Chicago, who acquired him from Vegas during the offseason. Prior to that, Fleury, No. 1 overall in 2003, won three Stanley Cups with Pittsburgh, whose tenure was the same as Wild general manager Bill Guerin when he was a Penguins player, and then moved to their headquarters. .
Kahkonen has gone 12–8 for the Wild this season, averaging 2.87 goals and a 0.910 save percentage. Overall, he leaves the organization 31-17-4 with a 2.89 goals average and .907 save percentage. Technically, the 25-year-old is a rookie, although he was an understudy last season and played 24 games.
Talbot has a contract for next season before his three-year contract expires. Wild selected goalkeeper Jesper Wallstedt in the first round (20th overall) in 2021 and the 19-year-old plays for Luleå HF, the 14-team runners-up in the Swedish top league this season.
Middleton, 26, has three goals and six assists in 45 games for the Sharks and has an average of 19:03 on the ice. He was selected last, 210th overall, in the 2014 NHL Entry Draft by the Los Angeles Kings.
Earlier Monday, the Wild sent the rights to former third-round pick Jack McBain, who played four seasons at Boston College, to the Arizona Coyotes for the second round in 2022. McBain told the Wild he would not sign and would be a free agent in mid-August as a result.
Fleury will take the number 29 jersey from defender Dmitry Kulikov, while Kulikov will move to the number 7 jersey. Middleton will wear the number 5 jersey.