The Wild Must Trade Gaborik.

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

The (insert Minnesota sports franchise name here) has an all-star pro athlete with an expiring contract. The Minnesota team offers the all-star athlete a contract that is huge, but does not quite fall into the "immorally immense" range. The Minnesota team hopes the athlete will accept the somewhat smaller offer to stay in the Twin Cities, where we are all nice and the schools are good. The athlete, of course, rejects the offer because "the grass is always greener" and insists on a few additional million dollars. We all know $92 million is more than $90 million. These guys have families to feed, for God sakes.

The team is then forced to decide whether to retain the athlete during his final year under contract (Torii Hunter) and pray he will resign, or trade him for far less value than he is worth (Kevin Garnett, Johan Santana, Randy Moss). The other teams in the league obviously know the Minnesota franchise cannot retain him and does not have bargaining leverage. They must either trade the star athlete for reduced value or risk losing him outright to free agency for nothing in return.

The star athlete is then either traded to another team for a bucket of (baseballs, footballs, basketballs, pucks) or lost via free agency and goes on to win championships and MVP awards in another city.

Does this all sound familiar? Well, it's happening again. This time is is Marian Gaborik with the Minnesota Wild. Gaborik has always been a bit of an enigma. At times, he is the best player in the league, and at other times he disappears completely - both literally and figuratively. He is often injured (constant groin pulls) or simply doesn't produce. I like the way Jim Souhan presents the issue in his latest column in the Star Tribune:

"Gaborik is hurt again, proving himself fragile, damaging his leverage in negotiations and the Wild's leverage in trade talks. He scored as many goals as me in last year's playoffs. (Good one Jim!) He's asking for the kind of money paid to dominant all-around players, and he isn't one. How do you take his side?"

Amen. And then again, as Souhan states:

"The Wild is getting ready to get rid of another popular player, refusing to pay top dollar for one of the guys who helps fill the X every game night, dooming the franchise to endless rebuilding and an over-reliance on their coach to keep winning games 2-1. How do you take the team's side?"

Again, amen. As always, this is the Minnesota Conundrum. What to do with Superstars. In this case, however, the genie is already out of the bottle. The badmouthing has started. First, Wild G.M. Doug Risebrough admitted publicly on Sid Hartman's radio show that Gaborik hurt himself, not in the ice, but playing hacky sack. Now, Strib beat-writer Michael Russo is reporting that Gaborik's agent has accused the team of "character assassination" of Gaborik. Yep, it's started.

The Wild now have no choice. They have to trade Marian Gaborik. You can't keep a guy on a team after this type of crap starts happening in the media (see Brett Favre). Of course, the other teams in the NHL know this, and they are probably loading up buckets of pucks hoping to make an "even-up trade."

Now, having said that, I don't think the Wild can really be blamed for this mess. They will hamstring the franchise for years to come if they resign the injury-prone Gaborik for $8-10 million a year over a decade. Sydney Crosby he ain't. I am not convinced that Gaborik is the kind of guy you build a team around. In fact, I don't even think he's the best player on the team. That honor goes to Mikko Koivu.

So, here we are again. The Minnesota Conundrum.

What would you do?

Jeff

P.S. - there is no question that if the Wild trades Gaborik, he will become the "next Gretzky."