Day 2 Wild flashback featuring 2 Johan's; Look ahead to free agency

Good morning back in the Twin Cities. Coming to you from the Delta Sky Club at LAX, where I'm actually sitting at a table with former Wild assistant GM Tommy Thompson as we prepare to hop on a red-eye back to MSP. Leafs coach Ron Wilson just walked in.

The Sporting News' Craig Custance sat next to Tommy during the draft, and he came over to me after and said it was astonishing how many guys Tommy hit on during the draft.

Tommy's going over his list with me now, and his mock draft should have been published frankly. The biggest steal he has the Wild getting is goalie Johan Gustafsson. Thompson had him ranked No. 44, and the Wild got him at 159. Strangely, Central Scouting had Gustafsson ranked behind two goalies that never got drafted.

Gustafsson was actually here today. The Wild was prepping for its next pick when he suddenly appeared at the table. Seemed like a good kid. He's a big, athletic goalie who's actually been to Minnesota twice. HIs agent, Jay Grossman, set him up at the Robb Stauber goalie school in Edina once, and then Gustafsson came back another time for a training camp with Sweden before heading to Fargo.

Gustafsson helped carry Sweden to the finals of the World Under-18s that lost to the U.S. He was teammates with Johan Larsson, one of the Wild's three second-round picks at No. 56, there, and he's been scored on by Larsson once in competition, he said. His favorite goalie, of course, is Henrik Lundqvist.

First, the stories. Here's the notebook talking mostly about Jason Zucker, the Wild's third second-rounder (Larsson and Brett Bulmer at No. 39 were not at the draft. Notebook also has an update on Mikael Granlund and talks about the 14 MInnesotans drafted.

And here's the analysis wrapping up draft weekend and looking ahead to free agency

So as I said on the webcam, I'm not going to pretend like I've seen these guys play and am some kind of expert into forecasting how good they'll be or even if they'll pan out.

Brett Bulmer's got a nasty side and I've heard he had a very good second half in his season at Kelowna. But he's definitely a sleeper. At midterm, Central Scouting had him as the 164th North American skater. He skyrocketed to 65 by the final ranking, and the Wild took him at 39. Larsson had one of the best World Under-18s of any player, leading Sweden in scoring and to a silver medal. Zucker looks like he can be a player, and the Wild traded a third and a fourth to grab him at No. 59. He's the first Nevada-trained player ever taken in an NHL draft.

With its last pick, the Wild chose Chilliwack's Dylen McKinlay.

Obviously, as you may have surmised, the Wild didn't make any trades that will alter its roster for the coming season. That doesn't mean it won't happen. Clearly, GM Chuck Fletcher's still got things cooking, but right now, nothing.

That means the Wild will have to be a little more active than it wanted to be in free agency to find short-term solutions. I'll report a lot more in the coming days some ideas, but as you can read in the analysis above, there are some initial ones.