A recent report came out that the Vancouver Canucks will be shopping Ilya Mikheyev this off-season. Would Minnesota work for Mikheyev?
A recent report came out from Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff that Vancouver Canucks General Manager Patrik Allvin has had discussions with other teams about trading Ilya Mikheyev this offseason.
Could the Wild and Canucks be trade partners?
Mikheyev, 29, is coming off a recent ACL surgery that he had back in early 2023. He seemed to struggle this year by only scoring 11 goals. At one point in the season Mikheyev went 34 straight games without a goal.
The Russian forward has two years left on his contract which carries a $4.75 million cap hit. He also has a 12-team no-trade clause. So if Minnesota is on that list, Mikheyev would have to waive it to come to Minnesota.
According to PuckPedia's Perri Cap Relief Calculator, the Canucks would likely have to attach a second round pick in a deal to ship Mikheyev out of Vancouver.
The Perri Cap Relief calculator helps find an alternative for a team if they don't want to retain salary on a player in a trade. It is expected the Canucks would want to move Mikheyev to free up salary to sign some of their pending free agents.
Retaining 50 percent of his salary is equal to a second round pick according to the calculator. Now Vancouver would likely want to trade a pick instead of retaining salary considering their cap hit situation.
That being said, the Wild don't have much cap space themselves. With just about $6 million in projected cap space for the season, acquiring Mikheyev's $4.75 million cap hit would put the Wild with just over $1 million left in cap space.
So acquiring Mikheyev at his full cap hit does not make sense for the Wild. Now if you get a second round pick would you make the trade? Or if you get a third round pick and get Vancouver to retain some salary would you?
Mikheyev will likely be better than he was last year but at that cap hit, considering the Wild's current cap problem, it doesn't really make sense for the Wild to engage in any conversations for the 29-year-old forward.
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