One to watch: Minnesota rookie Jonas Brodin

Earlier today, we had a commenter complain about our lack of Minnesota Wild coverage. Apparently, the team is doing quite well. And did you know Marian Gaborik doesn’t play for them anymore? We were so focused on the Penguins and Flyers we didn’t even notice.

Indeed, save for the thousands of posts we wrote about Ryan Suter and Zack Parise signing with the Wild this summer, we’ve practically ignored Minnesota here on PHT.

So we’re going to throw all you Wild fans a bone by giving what the kids call a “shout out” to a player everyone should watch tonight when the first place team in the Northwest Division (Minnesota!) plays the Red Wings (on NBCSN!) in Detroit.

Jonas Brodin.

Brodin is Minnesota’s 19-year-old rookie defenseman from Sweden. The Wild drafted him 10th overall in 2011.

On Monday, Brodin played a whopping 27:19 in the Wild’s 3-1 victory in Vancouver. And just for good measure, he scored his second goal of the year on a sweet point shot.

As much attention as the Wild received for signing free agents Suter and Parise to big contracts, general manager Chuck Fletcher knows that drafting and developing is just as, if not more, important.

“In today’s day and age you have to develop your own talent,” said Fletcher, per NHL.com. “It’s just too hard to find top talent. I mean, we were fortunate to sign Parise and Suter, but you can’t expect to go into the market and get the top players every summer; it just doesn’t work that way — so you really have to draft well and you have to develop your own talent. In a salary-cap system you have to make sure you have good young players that can contribute playing every year. It’s just a necessity in the salary cap world.”

For more on Brodin, the Star Tribune did a story on him recently.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to see if Sidney Crosby said anything.