There was a lot of movement from Minnesota on free agency regard their defencemen and former defencemen. We already saw Ryan Suter get signed in Dallas (fantasy take here) but that didn't stop them from making more moves. The first was grabbing veteran defenceman Alex Goligoski out of Arizona:

This is a nice pickup for the Wild. The dollars are a lot and that's an issue for cap-league fantasy owners. A guy carrying a $5M cap hit needs to bring monster peripherals, a lot of production, or a fair bit of both. While Goligoski can certainly be relied upon for hits and blocks – 184 combined in 56 games last year – he doesn't shoot much and will likely not see much PP time. They still have Spurgeon, Brodin, and Dumba around, plus Calen Addison is likely a fixture as well. Even if Goligoski gets some secondary PP minutes, it won't be enough to really make him a monster.

But he can be good. Pacing out a full season last year, the veteran d-man would push 30 points, 150 blocks and 100 hits. That is very good in the fantasy game, even in a cap league. I just worry about 40-point upside on a team that is as deep as it is on the blue line. He will lose ice time from the 23 minutes he played last year, so if he can still get 20-21, those marks remain a possibility.

We should also talk about another defenceman in Brennan Menell. He was traded from Minnesota to Toronto for a conditional 7^th, or else nothing. This one could hurt the Wild.

As a 21-year-old in the AHL in 2018-19, the 5'10 Menell led the Iowa Wild defecemen in production (44 points) by a mile (next-closest at 24). As a 21-year-old, he tied Jake Bean in points/game in the AHL. He followed that up by finishing the 2019-20 season with 47 points in 57 games, virtually an identical point pace to Bean, and they also had near-identical shot rates per game – 2.33 for Mennen and 2.41 for Bean. He then went to the KHL and blew the doors off as a 23-year-old, finishing second in scoring in the league among rearguards.

So, we have a guy who performed similarly to Jake Bean in the AHL, ran circles in the KHL, and is only one year older than Bean at age 24. Why, exactly, is Minnesota getting rid of him for nothing?

This has big potential for the Leafs. Maybe Menell flames out into nothing; we have seen lots of players light up the AHL and KHL but not be able to translate it to the NHL. All the same, this seems like a great bet by Toronto, as guys who produce well across a variety of leagues at a young age tend to keep up that trend in the NHL. Not all the time, but for a 7^th-round pick, it's very much worth finding out. The Leafs also have a spot on the right side of their blue line that is open should Menell play his way there out of camp. He is worth a flier in deeper leagues and I would be adding him in dynasty leagues right now. He could be a year away from being the PP1 QB for Toronto.