The Minnesota Wild have been in desperate need to shed salary before the start of free agency. Mikael Granlund and Nino Niederreiter, two of their best players, are up for giant raises. Those two were expected to eat up a significant chunk of the $13 million Minnesota had in cap space, which would leave them very little room to cobble together their roster.
Something had to give, and general manager Chuck Fletcher did his best to offload two of his largest salaries. On Friday morning, he shipped Marco Scandella to Buffalo along with Jason Pominville, in return, they received Tyler Ennis and Marcus Foligno.