After years of waiting for the Wild to regain the salary cap space that would make them players in the free-agent market, Tuesday was something of a letdown.

OK, it was a big letdown, even for a NHL watcher who didn’t see much greatness available in the 2025 free-agent class. It was “Return of the Jedi” instead of “The Empire Strikes Back.” It was mom or dad surprising the family with a new car and pulling into the driveway in a Honda.

It’s not so much what Wild fans got this week but the wait that made it a little disappointing. “Jedi” isn’t great, but it has its moments, and Hondas, well, they’re reliable transportation that will last years if you just take a little care of them.

After signing veteran forward Nico Sturm on Tuesday, and trading for Vladimir Tarasenko on Monday, Wild general manager Bill Guerin said, “Our team is better than it was a couple days ago,” and it probably is. Not spectacularly better. Not we’re-done-here better. But it was a step forward.Sturm, 30, is a veteran penalty killer with a career 58.8 percent success rate on draws — two things the Wild desperately need help with. Tarasenko, 34, is a wild card, a former star center looking for a fresh start after a down year with a crummy Red Wings team. He’ll eat $4.75 million in cap space next season, but he was acquired, essentially, for nothing — “future considerations” — from a Detroit team starting over and shedding salary.

More important, Guerin’s frugal speculation has left him with a full roster and roughly $10 million under the 2025-26 salary cap of $99.5 million — enough money to make a big addition on the trade market, which is really the only route still available to Minnesota but seems to be not so much Plan B as Plan A.

“You never think a certain level of player is gonna move. But in the past, you’ve seen it,” Guerin told reporters on Tuesday.

As recent examples, Guerin pointed to in-season trades for Mikko Rantanen, who helped Dallas advance to the conference finals last season, and Vegas acquiring Jack Eichel and Mark Stone in different deals before winning the Stanley Cup in 2023, among others.

Guerin, a former NHL star player and a fixture in USA Hockey’s executive club, has proven he can find usable parts for reasonable money.

Acquired for a seventh-round draft pick, Zach Bogosian has been an important piece of the blue line and is playing this season for $1.25 million. Marc-Andre Fleury was acquired at the trade deadline in 2022 and was a lot of things in nearly four seasons in Minnesota, all of them positive.

Guerin also sent Kevin Fiala to Los Angeles for the rights to Brock Faber and a first-round draft pick (Liam Ohgren), and just paid $800,000 to bring back wing Marcus Johansson, who has been disappointing — or at least an enigma — but can play on a top line for the kind of money the Wild once paid the Deweys.

The GM seems comfortable going into the season with a roster that was, during a hot start, the best road team in the NHL and made the playoffs despite losing to a lower body injury their best player and top-scorer — Kirill Kaprizov — for half the season. He is, of course, the biggest fish on Guerin’s wish list.

The young Russian left wing is about to play the final season of a five-year, $45 million extension and is now officially eligible to sign another before getting offers from other teams next July.

Kaprizov, 28, is the cap stone for everything this team wants to accomplish over the next several years, and the Wild now have the money to pay him big dollars, the popular estimate being around $15 million a year. Unless he signs early, Kaprizov will be able to play just about anywhere he wants to after this season. So, if there is a glaring weakness in the Wild’s tepid return to free agency, it’s that it’s unlikely to raise Kaprizov’s heart rate.

That now requires a trade opportunity that might never materialize.

“I don’t know if we’ll end up getting one, or doing something, but we want to,” Guerin said. “We’ve just got to be patient and make sure we do the right thing.”