no one here is answering the ? , why would cbj give up on him / trade him if he had this guaranteed bright future? to call this a low risk or med risk for all the draft capital we gave up is a joke. its a message board and im entitled to my opinion. several times i've been right and when i mention it say 2 years down the road every poster says "i never said that" posters will never change.
We're saying that because the best piece the Wild gave up has a fairly certain future as a #5-6 LD (Hunt) barring major developmental setbacks or leaps, while what the Wild got back has a still has a potential future as a #2-3 RD, and it's not a far-flung possibility as long as he can improve his skating.
The 1st is a late pick, and those pan out pretty infrequently, and when they do they tend to be bottom-6 forwards or bottom pairing defensemen, and the other picks are even later with even less of a chance of turning into a player.
No one is saying you don't need
any picks, but the Wild have a very full prospect system right now, and they won't be able to develop all of the guys they pick if they keep picking as many players as possible in the draft. They only have one AHL top line to plug prospects into, they only have 50 contract spots available. There are constraints on quantity, so when you run up against them as the Wild have, it's better to use some future picks or current prospects as currency in order to "move up" in terms of quality when you have the rare chance to.
tl;dr They swapped a fairly easy to replace defenseman out by giving up fairly low-end lottery tickets with a potential, much harder to replace, top-4 defenseman.