Minnesota Wild Re-Sign Brandon Duhaime, Avoid Arbitration
The Minnesota Wild avoided arbitration with RFA forward Brandon Duhaime by re-signing him to a one-year, $1.1 million contract extension on Sunday. With Duhaime locked up for at least one more season, the Wild now have their forward group for the 2023-24 season set — assuming Marco Rossi makes the team.
Duhaime is coming off an injury-riddled, yet quietly productive sophomore season. After scoring six goals and 17 points in his rookie year, the 26-year-old scored nine goals and 10 points in 51 games (which would be 14 goals over an 82-game season) during the 2022-23 campaign.
The 6-foot-2, 200-pound forward has become an asset in the Wild's bottom-six because of his physical, hard-hitting forechecking play style. Duhaime has the ability to be impactful both on the penalty kill and defensively, and he showed this past season that 15 goals may not be out of the realm of possibility for him.
The Wild controlled 51.33% of the expected goal share and outscored the opposition 18-12 with Duhaime on the ice at five-on-five last season, per Natural Stat Trick. He was also worth 1.1 standings points above replacement, according to Evolving-Hockey.
Duhaime is set to become a UFA next summer, so the 2023-24 season will be important for him as he continues to prove himself.
The Wild now have roughly $5.39 million left in cap space per Puckpedia to extend their other two RFA's in goaltender Filip Gustavsson and defenseman Calen Addison. Gustavsson's hearing date is scheduled for Aug. 4 while Addison wasn't eligible to file for arbitration.
Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, Pat Maroon, Alex Goligoski and Marc-Andre Fleury will also become UFA's next summer in addition to Duhaime while Conor Dewar will be the Wild's only RFA as of now.
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