June 29, 2022, will forever be a day that changed the landscape of the Minnesota Wild and Los Angeles Kings franchises. The two teams engaged in a blockbuster trade that sent Kevin Fiala to Los Angeles for Brock Faber and the 19th overall selection in the 2022 Draft. Now over two years later, both teams are happy with how the trade panned out.
Los Angeles Kings, A
The Kings’ side of the trade is not as exciting as Minnesota’s but it is still great. At the time, the team had Drew Doughty, Matt Roy, Brandt Clarke, Jordan Spence, and Sean Durzi on the right side of the defense, along with Faber. While that is a great problem to have, the team needed to move a right-handed defenseman, and Faber was the odd man out.
Hindsight is 20/20, but Faber was the consensus among the fanbase on who should be sent out. As well, sending him to his hometown Wild was an obvious move. The Kings needed star power at the top of their forward core, and the available Fiala was an obvious trade target. He had 33 goals and 85 points in 82 games with the Wild, an exact fit for what the young Kings team needed.
Now with 172 games as a King under his belt, Fiala has proven he can do the same in Los Angeles. Last season he had 29 goals and 73 points, second in each category among Kings’ skaters. He has been impressive in the top six, and for someone making just $7.875 million annually, he is great value.
Of course, the price given up was a lot, but the trade has worked out well for the Kings. If the team had not made that trade, Faber would likely be sitting in the minor leagues right now, fighting for a spot in the NHL. Additionally, whoever would have been taken with that draft selection would be playing in some random other league where they would not be contributing to the current roster.
Minnesota Wild, A+
In revisiting the Fiala trade, the context must be understood. On July 4, 2012, 10 years prior, the Wild signed Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to matching 13-year contracts. The two signings signified a change of culture in Minnesota. However, they failed to ever make a run and ended up buying out Suter and Parise years before the contracts were set to expire. This has resulted in tens of millions in dead cap. This financial situation forced the team to lose rising star Kevin Fiala due to his contract expiring since he would not fit under the salary cap. Despite their known battle with the salary cap, they got quite the haul for him.
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There were two pieces Minnesota received in the trade, and they are both substantial. First was the 19th overall selection which they used to select Liam Ohgren. At the time he was widely considered a top 10 to 20 prospect in the draft, and he has dominated since. In his first season in the Wild organization, he had 11 goals and 20 points in 36 games for Djurgårdens IF of HockeyAllsvenskan. This season, the left winger has five goals and six points in six games with the Iowa Wild of the American Hockey League. He has also spent time in the NHL, although he is expected to remain in Iowa once Minnesota’s forwards return to full health.
At just 20 years old, Ohgren fits Minnesota’s timeline well, which is set to take place in the next few seasons once Parise and Suter’s buyouts expire. With the Wild sitting in a playoff spot as one of the best teams in the Central Division, Ohgren will only enhance the roster once he establishes himself as a full-time NHLer.
The main part of the trade has become Faber, and for good reason. The right-handed defenseman has been nothing short of a star for the Wild since entering the organization. In the 2022-23 season, he captained the University of Minnesota where he had four goals and 27 points in 38 games. He was the top defenseman for one of the best schools in the United States and signed his entry-level contract in the spring.
In his rookie campaign, he only improved. He has cemented himself in the NHL with a full-time role as a defensive defenseman who happens to have eight goals and 47 points in 82 games. In the year of Connor Bedard, Faber was the runner-up in the Calder Trophy race, the award given to the top rookie player each season. While he did not win the award, Faber beat out a strong rookie class that contained Luke Hughes, Logan Cooley, Marco Rossi, and more. Now in the 2024-25 season, Faber continues to lead Minnesota’s blueline as an elite, two-way defenseman.
With the options available at the time, the Kings made a smart, fair trade that has helped them in the short and long term. They brought in Fiala, an elite winger, and extended him on a long-term deal where he is set to help them win a Stanley Cup. For the Wild, they got great value in a trade that could have been very lopsided, and they have set themselves up well in the long term by adding two young assets with enormous potential.
