SUNRISE, FLA. – With five picks on Day 2 of the NHL draft Saturday, it'll be interesting to see if the Wild selects a goaltender.
Chuck Fletcher makes it a point of emphasis at every draft, and if Devan Dubnyk is ultimately signed long-term, there will come a point where the Wild general manager might look at trading Darcy Kuemper.
So the Wild will be trying to develop the next so-called "Goalie of the Future."
"I don't feel as much urgency this year because we just signed Brody Hoffman [out of University of Vermont], we're working toward signing [draft pick] Stephen Michalek and we're really happy with [draft pick Kaapo] Kahkonen's development in Finland," Fletcher said. "But every year we'd like to try at least to draft one goalie."
Fletcher said there's a group of three or four goalies that the team really likes. The only goalie taken in the first round Friday was Russia's Ilya Samsonov, 22nd overall by the Washington Capitals. Other top-ranked goalies left include Barrie's MacKenzie Blackwood, Quebec's Callum Booth, Veini Vehvilainen from Finland, Topeka's Matej Tomek and Daniel Vladar from the Czech Republic.
All the top goalies in the draft have good size, which is now a prerequisite for Wild goalies.
Many teams avoid taking goaltenders in the first round because it takes four or five years for most to arrive. Some scouts go as far as to say a goalie needs to play 300 pro games before you know if he has what it takes.
"It's such a mental position, so you've got to be a real special talent to consider a goalie in the first round," Wild assistant GM Brent Flahr said. "With goaltending, you have to have expectations of waiting if you want to develop them properly,
