Minnesota Wild sign seventh first round pick of the NHL draft Mathew Dumba to entry-level deal
Mathew Dumba, who was a seventh overall pick in the first round of the 2012 National Hockey League (NHL) draft, was signed by Minnesota Wild to an entry-level deal on Thursday.
Chuck Fletcher, general manager of the Minnesota Wild, announced that Dumba will join their team and if he is not successful in doing so, he will go back to join his junior team, the Red Beer Rebels of Western Hockey League (WHL).
The 17-year-old defenseman, who will turn 18 next week on the 25th of July, has signed a three-year, two-way deal, which is worth $2.775 million. He would be given $925,000 per year for playing in the National Hockey League (NHL) and would be
given $70,000 per year for playing American Hockey League (AHL), with a cap hit of 1,633,333.
Minnesota Wild’s assistant general manager, Brent Flahr said, while talking to the media that,
"He's a big part of our future. Whether that's this year or the next year or the year after that remains to be determined."
Whereas himself, Dumba has cleared that he will go all out to play for Minnesota this year. Returning to Red Beer Rebels would be the second thing on his mind, first would be to represent and play in the NHL with Minnesota Wild.
He is also happy to take one step closer to NHL, that’s how he sees his signing, as he cleared it all while talking to Wild.com (the official website of Minnesota Wild), as he said,
“It's just one step closer to playing in the NHL. I'm not thinking about that at all. I just want to make Minnesota.”
Dumba had lead Team Canada in International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Under-18 championship, where he captained the side to win Bronze Medal. He was top-scorer in the championship with five goals, seven assists and total of 12 points as Canada lost
in the semifinal to U.S.A, the eventual champions, losing after a very fight, by the score of 2-1. U.S.A had swept and thrashed Sweden in the final by 7-0 whereas Canada had beaten Finland in a sudden death.
The native Calgary, Alberta, Canada, also had a brilliant year in WHL with Red Beer Rebels as he scored 57 points in 69 games, 20 of them were goals and 37 were his assists.
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