Wild add three big draft prospects to pipeline, including 6-foot-8 goalie

Minnesota left the 2026 Upper Deck NHL Draft with three prospects built for the middle and the crease, and Kayden Lemire looks like the one most likely to surface in Des Moines first. The Wild moved picks to land center Adam Andersson at No. 83, Lemire at No. 112 and goaltender Filip Ruzicka at No. 137, a compact class that points more to targeted development than volume.

That matters for Iowa because all three players fit the kind of traits the Wild organization keeps valuing at every level. Lemire, a 6-foot-4 forward from Edmonton, Alberta, posted 29 points in 68 Western Hockey League games with Prince George and added four points in 12 playoff games. He already plays a North American power game, and that makes his route to the AHL easier to picture than the others if he keeps building strength and pace over the next season or two.

Andersson brings the cleanest center projection, but the longest wait. The 17-year-old from Stockholm, Sweden, is 6-foot-4 and 218 pounds, and he scored 17 points in 30 games for Leksands IF in Sweden’s Under-20 league. He also helped Sweden win gold at the Under-18 World Championship, where he was among the tournament leaders in faceoff wins. Minnesota paid to move up for him, sending No. 89 and No. 153 to the Los Angeles Kings, which shows how seriously the club viewed his size and middle-ice tools.

Ruzicka is the wild card in the best sense of the word. At 6-foot-8 and 229 pounds, the Brandon Wheat Kings goalie already looks unlike almost anyone else in the pipeline. He went 26-14-1 with a 3.19 goals-against average, two shutouts and a .906 save percentage in 42 regular-season games, then followed with a 2.47 GAA and .936 save percentage in four playoff games. Minnesota got him with a pick acquired from San Jose, then had goaltending coach Frederic Chabot help frame the appeal of an extra-large goalie with athletic ability and good hands.

The Wild’s draft class was smaller than the five-player group in 2025 and the six-player class in 2024, but it was more deliberate. Bill Guerin and Ricard Persson both spoke after the draft, and Minnesota even featured Andersson and Ruzicka in development camp media on June 29, a sign the organization has already started folding them into the Wild-to-Iowa ladder.