Do the Minnesota Wild have an actual, logical plan?

The Minnesota Wild seemed to be moving one direction leading up to last trade deadline, but signing Mats Zuccarello serves as a significant pivot with little upside.

After watching pieces of an underachieving core continue to underachieve last season, Minnesota Wild general manager Paul Fenton broke it up leading into the trade deadline in February. Nino Niederreiter, Mikael Granlund and Charlie Coyle were gone, replaced by younger and cheaper players (Victor Rask, Kevin Fiala and Ryan Donato).

Fiala has upside approaching his 23rd birthday (July 22), and Donato showed production-based promise (16 points in 22 games for the Wild). Younger may not be better, but at least Minnesota was in better position to do some things this offseason.

The Wild reportedly almost had a deal done to get Phil Kessel from the Pittsburgh Penguins before he used his no-trade rights to nix it. It was easy to advocate for Minnesota’s interest in Kessel, though he was ultimately sent to the Arizona Coyotes. But the biggest move the Wild has made early in free agency is a little different.

Minnesota has signed forwards Luke Johnson and Gabriel Dumont on cheap two-way deals, and 24-year old, recently well-traveled Ryan Hartman is coming in on a two-year, $3.8 million deal. The team has also announced the signing of winger Mats Zuccarello to a five-year, $30 million contract.

Zuccarello is coming off a productive season with the New York Rangers Dallas Stars, as he tallied 40 points (12 goals) in 48 total games. But he also missed significant time with a broken arm, will turn 32 before next season starts (Sept. 1) and has gotten to 60 points and more than 25 goals just once in his career.

From the ongoing albatross the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter will be to a preemptive contract extension for Jason Pominville a few years ago that turned bad, albeit with Chuck Fletcher as general manager, the Wild don’t seem to have learned about paying players for an age-related drop-off. It’s too early to put Zuccarello in that group, but a -18 plus/minus over the last two seasons serves as a bit of a red flag and he’s now under contract through his age-36 season.

Trade rumors have surrounded winger Jason Zucker, with a deal to move him nearly getting done at the deadline in February and his rumored part of a proposed deal for Kessel. He seems to be next up on Fenton’s trade docket, as he should be, but now that it’s July 1 and Zucker’s 10-team no-trade list kicks in that move will be more difficult to make.

If Zucker is traded soon, even with one-third of the league off the table to some degree, then a case can be made there’s a logical plan in place. But Zuccarello is just not the kind of offensive player the Wild really needed (as Kessel would have been, for all his other flaws), and a five-year deal to secure his services sets him up to disappoint by about year three.