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Minnesota Wild GM Chuck Fletcher was on Toronto’s SiriusXMNHL on Thursday morning:

On how he would characterize Matt Dumba’s situation, who is still a restricted free agent, and on how his name has been coming up in trade rumors, despite the fact that he’s 21 and seems to be one of the keys to the future as a puck-mover:

“He’s a big part of our future. Negotiations are going fine. I expect they’ll be able to come up with a deal here sometime in the next few weeks.

“Matt, I think you made a great point. He’s 21. Certainly there’s part of his game that still need to grow and mature, and I think he’s taken great strides defensively the last couple of years under the tutelage of Rick Wilson. Now he’ll get a chance to learn under Scott Stevens, which I think will be a great opportunity for him.

“But scoring 10 goals in this league is hard, and he’s younger than a lot of players that play defense for the University of Minnesota, right down the road. So I think people sometimes tend to forget that.

“He’s a guy that has great offensive upside. He’s a physical kid. He cares. He competes. He seems to save his best moments for the big stage. He’s a guy we think highly of, and we’re excited to see how he continues to progress under Scott this year.”

(The first half of the interview was spent on the addition of Eric Staal via free agency, Chris Stewart’s return to the Wild, and what his plan may be to round out the forward holes on the roster. Near the end, Fletcher also noted: “We’ll probably hold onto the cap space that we do have right now for at least a little bit longer.”)

Source: SiriusXMNHL/ Transcript: Nichols

Fletcher: Dumba is ‘a big part of our future’