The Minnesota Wild have the NHL’s best young crop of defensemen

The Minnesota Wild have always been spoiled with great bluelines over the past 10-15 years. For the longest time, their top four of Ryan Suter, Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin and Matt Dumba was one of the best in the league, and even now, Spurgeon and Brodin are still excellent for the Wild.

And just as that previous group was starting to fall apart, the Wild have a completely different group to take it’s place. Brock Faber is one of the best young defensemen in the league. Zeev Buium was one of the best defensemen at the 2025 World Juniors. And they also just made a move for David Jiricek, who still has plenty of upside.

Frank Seravalli was asked to pick from three young, up-and-coming defense cores in the league in the Minnesota Wild (with Brock Faber, Zeev Buium and David Jiricek), the Detroit Red Wings (with Moritz Seider, Simon Edvinsson and Axel Sandin-Pellika) and the Montreal Canadiens (with Lane Hutson, Logan Mailloux and David Reinbacher) on Daily Faceoff Live, and he’s a big believer in the Wild’s group.

Frank Seravalli: I mentioned [after the World Juniors], I think Zeev Buium was the best player in the tournament, and that includes leading scorer Cole Hutson and Ryan Leonard and some of the other special players that played in the tournament and Sandin-Pellikka. But Brock Faber to me is by far the best player on this list. So he’s a clear number one by a significant margin if you’re gonna to rank all nine.

Now that said, it’s the strength of the total three. So I’m still going with Minnesota because I am a big believer in David Jiricek, and I thought the price that they paid to get him from the Columbus Blue Jackets was really reasonable.

The question for me would be who I went with after Minnesota, and I’m probably going to go with Detroit. I think the way that they’re lined up is the order that I’m likely go in.

You can watch the full episode here…