Fantasy Impact: Wild Trade Luke Kunin to Nashville for Nick Bonino

Dobber

2020-10-07

The Minnesota Wild trade forward Luke Kunin and the 101st overall draft pick to the Nashville Predators for forward Nick Bonino, the 37th overall draft pick and the 70th overall draft pick.

The Wild get: A 32-year-old coming off his best season in five years. Nashville essentially sold high here on Bonino, who is a solid two-way plugger and effective penalty killer. In fact, Kunin was a year or two away from being just as good if not better in those areas. Bonino makes $4.1M in the coming season and then he is a free agent. Kunin was up for a new contract which may approach $3M. So the Wild obviously did it for the picks and for more immediate help. At Pick 37 they selected Marat Khusnutdinov (profile here), a prospect we had ranked 29th and GM Bill Guerin probably likes more than Kunin.

The Predators get: A young winger with second-line upside, but who is likely earmarked to become a solid 45-point, third-line checker. Kunin's role on the penalty kill will grow with time and he is also future captain material.

Fantasy Players Impacted: Kunin's upside takes a bit of a hit with Nashville, as he now falls into the same mix as Auston Watson, Colton Sissons and others of that ilk – even if Kunin has a bit more offensive talent. And while Bonino will provide leadership, experience and solid penalty killing, he is probably not going to produce at last year's 0.56 points-per-game rate. An even swap of players who slot into the same line on each team is not going to disrupt the other lines any and therefore won't noticeably impact any other player value.

Check out the H2H stats comparison between Kunin and Bonino here

Fantasy Players this helps, in order:

None

Fantasy Players this hurts, in order:

Luke Kunin

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