Jarret Stoll claimed by Wild, heads to snow-covered Minnesota

Jarret Stoll found a taker on the waiver wire after the New York Rangers dropped him: The Minnesota Wild, who added the 33-year-old forward on Tuesday.

Stoll has an $800,000 cap hit. He played 29 games with the Rangers, notching a goal and two assists in a fourth-line role.

It’s that role that’s interesting, with regard to the Wild. Stoll is still an aces faceoff guy: 57.9 percent winning percentage, on 273 faceoffs. The Minnesota Wild could use that, as Mikko Koivu and Erik Haula are the only two players that have over 100 faceoff attempts and a winning percentage above 50 percent.

Haula is the team’s fourth-line center, playing 10:57 per game. So does Stoll push him out of that role, or does Stoll play the wing while taking faceoffs?

If it’s the latter, that was the thing that had the Rangers popping him on waivers. From the NY Post:

[Alain] Vigneault cited the presence of Dominic Moore as the fourth-line pivot being a reason for Stoll’s ouster.

“After trying different scenarios, we just felt that our best option was playing Dom in the middle,” Vigneault said after Monday’s practice in Westchester. “When we came to that conclusion — and Jarret on the wing hasn’t been an easy transition for him — we just, after discussing it at length the last couple days, figured Jarret is a two-time Stanley Cup winner, by putting him on waivers maybe a team picks him up and gives him another opportunity. So we’ll see what happens and we’ll go from there.”

There was apparently another claim on Stoll, but the Wild were ahead in the line.

It’ll be interesting to see his usage with the Wild, but it’s a low-risk move that could benefit the Wild. GM Chuck Fletcher likes him on the penalty kill, where the Wild are 26th in the League.

He’s back in the West, for one thing; and perhaps a guy who knows the Los Angeles Kings a little bit is a good person to have when you might be a Western Conference wild card. (Or is that too Belichick-ian?)

So good luck to Jarret Stoll. Hopefully this works out. Because signing a lease on a New York apartment with Erin Andrews and then getting cut by the Rangers is rough.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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