NEW YORK — Second chance, reboot or just a change. Whatever you call the trade that sent Pat Maroon to Minnesota for a seventh-round draft pick, it has been a boon to player and team.

And Maroon believes a similar trade for his former Tampa Bay Lightning teammate Zach Bogosian can pay similar dividends.

“I think sometimes you need a fresh start to kind of recharge, a second chance — or whatever it is,” Maroon said Thursday after the Wild’s morning skate at Madison Square Garden, their first with new defenseman Bogosian. “Obviously, you can see he wasn’t playing in Tampa. I don’t know why. But I think Minnesota has upgraded here.”

General manager Bill Guerin on Wednesday made room on the blue line by trading Calen Addison to San Jose for a prospect and fifth-round pick, then completed a trade for Bogosian, a Stanley Cup winner with the Lightning in 2020 who started his 16th NHL season by mostly watching from the press box, a healthy scratch in nine of Tampa Bay’s 13 games.

“Things just got stale there,” said Bogosian, who was set to play with rookie Daemon Hunt against the Rangers on Thursday night. “It seemed like the writing was on the wall at some point. That’s sports, that’s business, and I’m looking forward to being here.”

Maroon seems to have been rejuvenated by his trade. Playing up and down the Wild’s lineup, he has two goals and seven assists in 12 games, only five points off his pace in 80 games last season in Tampa Bay. He and Bogosian played together with the Lightning for three seasons, including 2019-20, when they won a second straight Stanley Cup.

“He was a huge piece,” Maroon said of his once and future teammate.

At 6-foot-2 and 222 pounds, Bogosian, 33, ticks a lot of boxes for the Wild, who have won two in a row for the first time this season to improve to 5-5-2 but have struggled defensively for most of the season. After 12 games, they rank second-to-last in NHL goals-against (48 total, 4.00 on average), and the team wanted to get heavier and maybe a little meaner at the back end.
“Yeah, he’s mean.” coach Dean Evason said of Bogosian. “He plays how the Minnesota Wild play. So, we’re looking forward to putting him right in there.”

Bogosian, 33, said he’s been happy with his game in the few he has played in this season. Since 2019-20, he has a combined plus/minus of 5. He also already knows many of his new teammates, either because he has played with them (Maroon, Marcus Foligno) or because he and his family make their offseason home in Minnetonka.

“That obviously makes it easier coming to a new organization,” he said.

Odd man out

The Wild’s defense has been in flux all season because of a preseason upper body injury to captain Jared Spurgeon. Dakota Mermis has come up from Iowa and earned a regular spot, and Hunt was set to play his third full NHL game on Thursday night.

The odd man out right now is Jon Merrill, a puck mover who has an even plus/minus through 10 games.

The last man off the ice after Thursday’s skate, he expressed support for teammates who have won two in a row. “You hope that the team can keep getting wins,” he said.

But he also said he wants to be in the lineup.

“You can always be better,” he said. “There’s always room for improvement. Whenever you’re out, you take an opportunity to watch from up top and try and get better in practice and be ready to go when you get back in.”

Spurgeon is in New York but won’t play against the Rangers, and isn’t expected to be available on Friday in Buffalo. That leaves Sunday’s home game against Dallas as his next chance to join the team before it leaves for a two-game, weeklong trip to Sweden on Monday.

“He’s skating right now,” Evason said after the morning skate. “We will see how he progresses. I’ll talk to him after, talk to (head athletic trainer) John (Worley), and then we’ll have to make a decision on that.”

Briefly

Marc-Andre Fleury, the winning goalie in the Wild’s past two games, was penciled in to start on Thursday night. Evason said Filip Gustavsson will be in net against the Sabres.