The Wild traded veteran winger Nino Niederreiter _ who had one of the most storied goals in team history _ to the Carolina Hurricanes for center Victor Rask on Thursday.
Rask, 25, has one goal in 26 games for Carolina, missing time for hand surgery after he sliced two fingers open while preparing food.
Niederreiter, 26, has scored nine times 46 games this season. He has the fifth most goals (110) in Wild history.
"Rask is a little younger and can play center," said first-year Wild general manager Paul Fenton. "He's got years on his contract, which is reasonable, and if he comes in and scores, then it really looks like a good trade.
"You can't have enough centers, we're finding out in the league more and more. ... He needed a change of scenery. I hope he gets back his scoring and his production."
Both players have contracts that run through the 2021-22 season. Niederreiter's five-year deal is worth $26.5 million, and Rask's five-year contract is for $24 million.
Niederreiter, a first-round pick (fifth overall) by the Islanders in 2010, has played in 498 NHL games and has 112 goals. New York traded him to the Wild before the 2013 season. In 2014, he scored an overtime goal in Game 7 of a playoff series to beat the Colorado Avalanche.
Rask, a native of Leksand, Sweden, has 63 goals and 100 assists in 339 NHL games. A second round (42nd overall) pick in the 2011 draft, he was a gold medalist at the 2012 World Junior Championships and the 2017 World Championships.
The deal ended Niederreiter's six-season tenure with the team and signaled the first major subtraction from the Wild's core under Fenton's watch.
Fenton said trading one of the team's more popular players gives Wild players "an alert."
"I'm letting the players convince us of where they are," he said.
After a career-high 25 goals in 2016-17, Niederreiter's production has waned; after 18 goals and 32 points last season, which included a pointless performance in the playoffs, his struggles resurfaced this season.
He went goal-less the first 14 games of the season, only recently starting to demonstrate a more consistent presence in the offensive zone with two goals in his last three games.
Amid his departure, the Wild add a left-shot center who also appears primed for a fresh start. Rask has just a goal and six points in 26 games this season, a heavy drop-off from his previous three seasons in which he scored at least 14; he had a career-high 21 in 2015-16.
"It has to do with talent level," Fenton said of the trade. "The fortunate part is that we did save money. It opens up some cap space for us and opens up some future cap space for us."
The trade was the second in two days for Fenton, who got winger Pontus Aberg from Anaheim for Justin Kloos on Wednesday.
When asked how he evaluated his team through the first half of the season, Fenton said, "We hit a couple of bumps in the road and had a roller-coaster ride. We're looking for more consistency."
