The Detroit Red Wings traded right winger Vladimir Tarasenko to the Minnesota Wild in exchange for future considerations.
Tarasenko has one season left on a two-year contract with a $4.75-million cap hit. He heads to the Wild, his sixth NHL team since the start of 2022.
The 33-year-old spent the first 10 seasons of his NHL career with the St. Louis Blues, which selected him 16th overall in the 2010 NHL draft. During that time, he won the Stanley Cup in 2019.
In his 11th season, the Blues traded him to the New York Rangers in January 2023. He played the rest of the season for the Blueshirts before signing a one-year contract with the Ottawa Senators in free agency.
After 57 games with the Senators, which were on their way to missing the playoffs, they traded Tarasenko to the Florida Panthers at the NHL trade deadline in 2023-24. Tarasenko had 14 points in 19 games with the Panthers before putting up five goals and nine points in 24 games en route to the Panthers' first-ever Stanley Cup championship.
Tarasenko signed with the Red Wings as a UFA in 2024. This past season, he recorded 11 goals and 33 points in 80 games, both career lows in seasons when he played at least 40 games. His average ice time of 14:47 was the lowest since his rookie campaign in 2012-13.
Now, the Red Wings made a cap dump by trading him to Minnesota. They now have nearly $23.2 million in projected cap space, according to PuckPedia. They have five pending UFAs, including Patrick Kane, and three pending RFAs, including Jonatan Berggren.
As for the Wild, they get a sniper who can play up and down the lineup and potentially bounce back from the relatively low production in 2024-25. His shooting percentage this past season was 8.3 percent, the second-lowest of his career, in which he usually scores on between 10 percent and 15 percent of his shots.
Right winger Gustav Nyquist is among Minnesota's pending UFAs, so if he's out, Tarasenko fits right in for improved depth and secondary scoring.
The Wild still have just under $13 million in projected cap space, with three pending depth UFAs and pending RFA Marco Rossi, who's been a subject of trade speculation.
Tarasenko, a 6-foot-1, 219-pound NHL veteran from Yaroslavl, Russia, has 304 goals and 358 assists for 662 points in 831 career regular-season games. He also has 49 goals and 73 points in 121 post-season contests. He was voted to the NHL's second all-star team in 2014-15 and 2015-16, and he's played in four NHL All-Star Games.
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