I agree with you BGTC. In a real trade, Necas would have to be a guy we acquired from Carolina. I love the dude. However, my primary goal (as it is entitled above) is to acquire McDavid, which would take a lot of 1st round picks. If I structured my trades for the best prospect I could get, some of those guys (like Necas) are so good, it could possibly prevent my ability to land the number of top picks I sought to acquire McDavid. It's not like the majority of the guys I acquired are riff-raff (and this includes an old Backes on a terrible contract). I brought Backes in to lead by example (as a 4th line guy) all of these young studs I've acquired. He has always played the game correctly and proved for years he was a good leader, and Boston needs to dump him badly. I took on Backes to ensure Boston gave up what I wanted. I get the idea to try and acquire all of the top prospects from each team, but that's just not possible long-term salary cap wise, and all teams need some indians since not everyone can be a chief. Bottom pairing and bottom nine guys are needed. While we'd all like the perfect EA Sports team, that isn't feasible in the modern game. I tried to acquire guys who would fill the needs of the team at the prices I projected I could afford if it were a true team. Perhaps I blew it on some of them, but it is after all, just a hypothetical team.

All fair - I still think Tarasenko is worth Necas + Pesce + 1st. He's a top winger in the game. He gets a top return.

I'm just curious to hear from a Minnesota fan's perspective. Why is Zucker a trade piece? Being a St. Louisan, I'm obviously not as familiar with the Wild, but the Blues always play you guys in conference so I get to see the Wild a bit. I've always thought Zucker was an above-average player. I always hated to see him get a step on someone due to his speed. Why are you (and perhaps the WIld) interested in traded such a solid player?

He's good but extremely frustrating. He has a ton of speed and gets a lot of breakaways but more often than not he can't score on them for whatever reason. His scoring in general is an issue, he should have way more goals than he does this year and even last year he should have been around 40 goals but he either doesn't elevate the puck leading to an easy pad stop, tries to do too much and loses the puck, or just send the puck wide of the net. I like his tenacity some games, but he has a tendency to coast through others and be lazy. When he's skating a lot of this isn't an issue since it creates chances for other linemates but as I mentioned he has a tendency to be lazy and not move his legs. There are a lot of teams that I think would want him and we could get a decent return for him so that's why he's traded a lot on here. A lot of Wild fans are frustrated with the mediocrity that our current core has shown is our ceiling, and changing that starts with trading away your core players like Zucker, Granlund, Coyle, and Staal.

Thank yo for the retort. I think the Blues fans are a tad frustrated with Tarasenko in a similar way, although the players are very different. Tarasenko appears to loaf on the ice as well at times, but he doesn't have Zucker's speed. As you stated above, Zucker doesn't have Tarasenko's ability to put the puck in the net. Perhaps we can create a hybrid player of one with Zucker's speed and creativity with Tarasenko's shot? Add to that Ryan O'Reilly's tenacity, and we've got an absolute stud!