5 Minnesota Wild players who could follow Chuck Fletcher out the door

1. RW Charlie Coyle

Perhaps the worst trade Fletcher ever made as Wild GM came in June of 2011, with defenseman Brent Burns shipped to the Sharks for Coyle, Devin Setoguchi and a first-round pick. Burns won the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman in 2017, after finishing third in the voting for the award in 2016, and he has tallied at least 60 points in four straight seasons.

Coyle is the long-standing remaining return left from that bad deal. He set a career-high in points (56) in 2016-17, and appeared set to break through further this year. But a fractured fibula of his own derailed his season very early, and the product of Boston University delivered just 37 points (11 goals) in 66 games before going scoreless and being generally invisible against Winnipeg.

The Wild need a physical “power forward”, and at 6-foot-3 and 221 pounds Coyle has shown flashes he can be that. But he’s far too easy to not notice on the ice, and that ultimately falls totally on him beyond any injury that lingered this season.

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As with many others on this list, Coyle is still young at 26 years old. And with two years and $8 million left on his contract, a team with a dumb general manager may willingly hand his coach a problem the last two Wild coaches have not been able to fix. That’s an opportunity a new Minnesota general manager will have to pounce on.