With plenty of defensive prospects, Wild loads up on forwards in draft

MONTREAL — The Wild's draft philosophy is to scoop up the best player available when the team is on the clock, but that strategy didn't prohibit the Wild from restocking a key position in the pipeline.

Offense was the theme on Friday at Bell Centre in Montreal when the team added another four forwards after picking two in the first round a day earlier.

"We needed it," General Manager Bill Guerin said of the Wild, which addressed the other side of the puck last year by taking four defensemen and a goalie among its seven selections. "If you look at our prospects now, we have a lot of defensemen. It just so happened that it kinda fell that we got some forwards this year, and I think that's really good."

After tabbing a pair of wingers in Round 1 in Liam Ohgren (No. 19) and Danila Yurov (24), the Wild used its first of two second rounders to bring in center Hunter Haight.

"We think there's a good, high ceiling of potential, someone that will move up and be a top power play guy and a first-line center," said Judd Brackett, the Wild's director of amateur scouting. "We think the runway with Hunter is excellent."

With No. 56, the team went back to a winger, Rieger Lorenz, the reigning Rookie of the Year for the Alberta Junior Hockey League and Canadian Junior Hockey League. He's committed to Denver.

Next up was another winger, Michael Milne out of Winnipeg in the Western Hockey League; Milne went 89th overall in the third round. Then the Wild moved to defense, taking Ryan Healey at 121 before No. 153 David Spacek, whose dad Jaroslav played in the NHL for 13 seasons.

In Round 6, the Wild closed out the draft with Slovakian center Servac Petrovsky (185).

Most of these players are expected to be at the Wild's development camp next week at Tria Rink.

Coach Dean Evason expects to test out different players in the spot vacated by Kevin Fiala, who was traded last week to Los Angeles.

"I could name probably six guys that we're thinking about, talking about," Evason said at the draft. "But until we get to that point, we can put whatever we want up on the wall and we have put different people, different positions … but we will go through that process in training camp.

"We've got lots of games, so we'll get a good opportunity to see people play with different people and hopefully we can do it by committee."

One player who will get an opportunity to fill that hole for the Wild is prospect Marco Rossi, who spent most of last season in the minors but did play two games with the Wild.

Despite that limited NHL experience, Rossi still could end up in a top-six role if he makes the team because Evason believes everyone should be put in the positions they're going to play.

"He may not handle it very well right away," Evason said. "That's OK, right? He may have some growing pains, what have you, in the development process. But it is exactly that, part of his development."

Evason called the uncertainty surrounding Kirill Kaprizov "a scary situation" and said, "We hope that it all gets sorted out correctly."

Russian players' ability to return to the NHL has been speculated about recently, with Philadelphia prospect Ivan Fedotov getting taken to a military base in Russia because his name was linked to fraudulent military identification.

NHL officials have remain tight-lipped about the status of Russian players, 57 of whom skated in the league during the regular season. After a Russian newspaper reported that Kaprizov had tried to leave the country, Guerin said Wednesday that the team's leading scorer was still in Russia.