NEW YORK – Calen Addison is out and Zach Bogosian is in.
The Wild made a shakeup to their blue line on Wednesday, first trading Addison to San Jose for forward Adam Raska and a fifth-round draft pick in 2026; then in a separate deal the Wild brought in the veteran Bogosian from Tampa Bay for a 2025 seventh-rounder.
These changes come right as captain Jared Spurgeon is getting closer to a return from injury.
Bogosian, 33, has nearly 800 games of NHL experience and like Pat Maroon, whom the Wild traded for from the Lightning over the summer, won a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2020.
Raska, who’s mostly been in the minors the last two seasons, will report to Iowa in the American Hockey League.
Having won two in a row for the first time this season, the Wild are back in action on Thursday vs. the Rangers before finishing their New York road trip against the Sabres.
Addison exits early after parts of four seasons with the Wild, the team initially acquiring him as the prized prospect in the Jason Zucker trade with Pittsburgh in 2020 that also netted the Wild a first-round pick that turned into another defenseman in Carson Lambos.
After splitting time between the Wild and minors, Addison earned a regular role on the team last season and drew mixed reviews. He shined as the power play’s quarterback, with 18 of his 29 points coming on the power play, and his 26 assists set a franchise record for rookies.
But he was benched on multiple occasions for his defensive play and eventually became a permanent spectator after the Wild picked up veteran defenseman John Klingberg at the trade deadline.
Team brass informed Addison the willingness and competitiveness he had on the power play needed to translate to his 5-on-5 game, and Addison arrived for the season motivated to prove himself – this after the 23-year-old didn’t sign a one-year, $825,000 contract until the day before players reported to training camp.
Before the trade, Addison had been penciled into every lineup, but the Wild saw more of the same performance: Addison had no goals and five assists and was recently demoted from the top power play unit during the Wild’s shakeup to snap out of a four-game losing streak.
His departure does subtract another defenseman from a blue line that has yet to be at full strength this season, but the Wild could be making an addition very soon.
Spurgeon, who’s been sidelined since suffering an upper-body injury in the Wild’s second-to-last preseason game, is expected to play before the trip is over.
Dakota Mermis, who has been with the team since getting called up from Iowa during the first week of the season, has two goals and three assists in 10 games while taking reps on the penalty kill. Daemon Hunt, a third-round pick by the Wild in 2020, has had his ice time grow substantially over his last two games after he made his NHL debut on Oct. 27 at Washington.
While those two have played recently, Jon Merrill was the Wild’s lone healthy scratch.
Bogosian has played in 787 NHL games, including four this season for the Lightning. The 6-2, 225-pound native of Massena, N.Y., has also skated for Atlanta, Winnipeg, Buffalo and Toronto after being the third overall pick — behind Steven Stamkos and Drew Doughty — in the 2008 draft by the Thrashers. He has 57 career goals and 715 penalty minutes.
The 22-year-old Raska is a native of the Czech Republic. He was a seventh round pick (201st overall) in 2020 while playing for Rimouski Oceanic in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
He played in five games for the Sharks in 2021-22 and three games last season, with no points. With the San Jose Barracuda of the AHL he has nine goals in 110 games over the past three seasons.