Getting moved to a different team didn’t surprise Gustav Nyquist. “I knew something was coming,” he said. But the timing, almost a week ahead of the NHL trade deadline, was earlier than he expected.

With the injury-riddled Minnesota Wild struggling to score and kill penalties and trying to stave off a stumble down the standings amidst a three-game losing streak, general manager Bill Guerin traded a 2026 second-round pick to the Nashville Predators on Saturday to bring back veteran forward Gustav Nyquist.

The Wild operate with a higher degree of difficulty than 31 teams in the NHL, and trading their first-round pick for David Jiricek gives them less draft capital to offer other teams. That's all understandable. Nyquist was available, he could fit into the Wild's cap picture, and there was familiarity. It's not hard to see why the trade got made.