MN Wild 2017-18 Official Thread

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I think our issue is that we don’t have enough players that can handle “playoff hockey”…

There is a lot to this. Look at the injuries we have had to key guys over the years including this year. Nino has been injured a fair amount, Coyle as well. Coyle played through the playoffs one year with two separated shoulders. We have guys that are not small, but don’t take the punishment well. Some of the injuries are a bit unlucky, but we need them to learn how to take hits to avoid some of them. How many times have you seen Prosser just get annihilated and he gets right back up. There isn’t a player in the league that gets hit as often and as hard as he does yet he gets back up every time.

IMO the majority of players that have not contributed come playoff time should try to be moved….Granny (to small), Coyle (big guy but disappears too often) Nino (gets hurt too much), Foligno and Ennis are both a bust…just look at the stats of these guys the last month and into the playoffs that last couple of years…makes you want to throw up. I also think the “C” should go to a younger guy who has more heart like Zucker…Parise, Koivu, Suter are just riding it out and playing for the money now, Staal had his glory yr and will not repeat that performance IMO an should try to be moved while his stock is as high as it will ever be again. I am so frickin happy Fletcher is gone.

Parise riding it out and playing for the money. Thanks for the laugh, that was a good one.

Dear Homerk,
On Monday, I made the difficult decision that Chuck Fletcher would not return as General Manager of our hockey club. In thinking about this significant change, it was very important to me that you, as a member of our Season Ticket Community and someone who is invested in our success, hear directly from me about the future of the Wild.
I’m confident about this: you and I share a passion to bring the Stanley Cup to the State of Hockey. And the responsibility for getting us there starts with me.
Chuck built our club into a perennial playoff contender. And that is no easy task in itself. Only two other clubs in the League have matched our six straight years in the post season. But it became apparent to me that, while we were close, our “good” wasn’t good enough anymore. And I feel that it is going to take a new set of eyes, and some new thinking about our roster, to assess things and take the steps necessary to get us to the next level.
I’m not looking for a rebuild. I’m not patient enough for that and you should not be either. And our situation does not require tearing things down and starting over. We’re not far from being the team we all believe can deliver a Stanley Cup. As I have in the past, I’ll continue to give the necessary resources to our new GM, resources intended to remake the Wild from a “good” playoff contender to a “great” Stanley Cup championship contender. That’s why I’m in this…nothing less.
The fans in the State of Hockey are the most passionate in the NHL. You and other members of the Season Ticket Community have given incredible support to our organization, which we don’t take for granted. And for that we are so grateful.
Sincerely,

Craig Leipold

Move Granny? He may be small, but he plays playoff hockey. He shows up. Foligno had a good series and played like one of those guys everyone is asking for, he finished his checks.

I think you have to keep Granrud he has playoff credibility
Get rid of Coyle before the start of the 2018-19 season, his playoff credibility is missing he plays uninspired hockey 75-85% of the time. Unless the new GM pulls off a Las Vegas type of off season I think most of the moves as far as trades go will be prior to next seasons playoffs.

homerk wrote:

I think you have to keep Granrud he has playoff credibility

A season ticket holder and you don’t even know his name?
There is some dead weight on this team in need of some upgrades, but I think Foligno, while he started slow, finished strong and was visible in the playoffs. He is the type of player that Coyle should be (but Coyle should score more), but we don’t get the physical side from Coyle much at all.
I think next year will be a strong one for Foligno as he really embraces his role more.
Ennis, his days are numbered. I don’t think there is any way he isn’t bought out or moved somehow. I don’t know how we acquire anything for him at the dollars he is making so buyout is most likely the only option.
Speculation is that the Salary Cap is going up to as high as 82 million next year. That will certainly give some breathing room to make some additional moves.
Chuck had some blunders, but he also brought the Wild to relevancy every year. If the Cap goes up like they say it might, he would have had some additional flexibility and who knows what he could have done. As it is now, the new GM may reap the rewards out of something that Chuck didn’t have the pleasure of having the opportunity. He made his bed with the deals he made, but I don’t think he did a horrible job.
There is a nice detailed writeup of each and every move that Chuck made on TheAthletic by Russo. It really makes you shake your head at a few of them, but there are some good ones too. Its easy to pick apart things in hindsight and there are a lot of GMs out there that would have similar or worse track records.
Good Luck to Chuck and welcome GM Fenton. He met all day yesterday with Leipold. Probably should have signed him before letting him leave though.

I’ll give Fletcher credit that he was willing to roll the dice and try to add some pieces for the playoff push, now they didn’t work out very well, but he had the ballz to try…when was the last time a MN sports team did that? (Vikes with Favre?) also by making the playoffs each season his draft pick slot was never in the gamechanger position, so losing out on traded away late in the round picks at the deadline probably didn’t have as big of an impact as most think…

Ultimately his downfall (any GM’s downfall) is that his hand picked/drafted players didn’t produce enough…there’s only 1 team each season that doesn’t have to say that…

at least he left some tools in the shed to work with (Greenway, Kunin, Erickson Ek, Kaprizov) Risebrough just depleted this team of everything at the end of his tenure…

I like the Assistant GM from Nashville, seems he has the respect of his peers from what i’ve read..

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I’ll give Fletcher credit that he was willing to roll the dice and try to add some pieces for the playoff push, now they didn’t work out very well, but he had the ballz to try…when was the last time a MN sports team did that? (Vikes with Favre?) also by making the playoffs each season his draft pick slot was never in the gamechanger position, so losing out on traded away late in the round picks at the deadline probably didn’t have as big of an impact as most think…

Ultimately his downfall (any GM’s downfall) is that his hand picked/drafted players didn’t produce enough…there’s only 1 team each season that doesn’t have to say that…

at least he left some tools in the shed to work with (Greenway, Kunin, Erickson Ek, Kaprizov) Risebrough just depleted this team of everything at the end of his tenure…

I like the Assistant GM from Nashville, seems he has the respect of his peers from what i’ve read..

Agreed on all accounts.
Regarding Fenton, he was interviewed for the job here, but Fletcher won out. Kind of a interesting plot thickens scenario.
Fenton has worked for Leipold before so I am sure they are well aware of each other’s expectations. Could be a good fit.

homerk wrote:
I think you have to keep Granrud he has playoff credibility

A season ticket holder and you don’t even know his name

Sorry Captain Mushy

Since the end of the Wild’s season and contract run out of Fletcher I have a new idea, mantra, recipe for success in professional sports:

“Fan’s hindsight wins Championships”

I think we’re off to a great start.

mplspug wrote:

Move Granny? He may be small, but he plays playoff hockey. He shows up. Foligno had a good series and played like one of those guys everyone is asking for, he finished his checks.

Granny last 2 yrs COMBINED stats:

April 2G/3A
Playoffs 1G/4A

Terrible end of year stats for any player IMO…too small, wears out by end of the year when we need players to step up…others are just as fast and bigger/stronger.

Granny is not a goal scorer and has never been. He is, on the other hand, one hell of a set up man!! Not having many assists is because no one can find the twine on this team!

It’s a serious reach(blow them up) to get rid of Granny. It’s freaking ridiculous!!! There are many many more players I would get rid of well before him, in fact, he would be the last one to go in my opinion. He is one of the few reasons we even got to the playoffs. But there is the notion that if we don’t get to the playoffs we won’t get beat in the first round

Preach on Sticker! Granlund and Spurgeon are the two untouchables on this team IMO.
Everyone else is pretty much fair game.
Funny, how they are two of the smallest guys on the team, but both of them mean so much to this team and the success. We were lucky to stay afloat when Spurgeon went down because the likes of Seeler and Soucy played well.
I wish Granlund would shoot more. He does have a good shot and really would surprise some goalies if he did shoot more because they heavily cheat toward the pass when he has the puck.
I think the coming days you are going to find out that Coyle and Nino were at 75% at best because of their injuries sustained earlier in the year. Nino came back too soon and that hurt him big time down the stretch.
As much as I like Coyle and hoped he would turn into something he hasn’t shown yet, I think its time to test the waters with him.

My only complaint about Coach Bruce is that he won’t let lines stay together when they start a mini slump, he’s too quick to pull the trigger and mix players up…Players need game time together to build trust & awareness of each other, just seems like we line juggle too much…

That and it took him how many OT losses to finally figure out Koivu & Suter need to be on the ice less vs more… They are not responsible 3on3 players….but in all honesty, who on our team is?

Our 3on3 strategy needs to be absolutely blown up and re-written, we could have had home ice in the 1st round if we won 1/2 of those OT losses…are we even practicing 3on3??

Slabhunter wrote:

Granny last 2 yrs COMBINED stats:

April 2G/3A
Playoffs 1G/4A

Terrible end of year stats for any player IMO…too small, wears out by end of the year when we need players to step up…others are just as fast and bigger/stronger.

And only Parise and Koivu have better stats in those playoff years.

I don’t care about stats, because I’ve seen him play on the post season. He handles the physicality of the playoffs better than guys on the team bigger than him.

Why don’t we all sit back and take a good look at what our team captain has done for this team. NOTHING! As long as he is silently leading by example this team will stink.

The first thing the new GM should do is go straight to Koivu and ask him to waive his no trade. He is the cancer of this team. Then after that put Eric Staal in as the captain. He seems to be the only vocal person on the bench.

Haula if you hear Me… Eric and Alex show still going strong IN LV.
1-G 2-asst each in “ROUND 2” game 1
Tuch goal tops the game ! highlights

Thanks Fletch..

There is no doubt the cap fin has slowed down and flat out looks lazy…and yes I believe he should be relieved of the C and it should go to staal or zp even…he captained the devils to a final…staal seems more of the guy to get on their butt if they ent up to par but either would be much better than koivu…i don’t care how long he has been there…HOLLLLLAAAAA gosh I sure do miss him in glad to see him being utized and excelling in Vegas to bad he wasn’t given that opportunity here to show how expendable Coyle really is

Am I crazy? I swear when I listen to a game on NBCSN I hear a random sound like a puck clanking off the post. I swear they dub that in. They can be skating through the neutral zone and I’ll hear what sounds like a puck clanking of the post. Anyone else here it? If so, you have an explanation?

mplspug wrote:

Am I crazy? I swear when I listen to a game on NBCSN I hear a random sound like a puck clanking off the post. I swear they dub that in. They can be skating through the neutral zone and I’ll hear what sounds like a puck clanking of the post. Anyone else here it? If so, you have an explanation?

I hear that all the time, always figured it was too many pucks to the head from my younger days.

S.R.

So it’s not me?

And I don’t know who this lady is on the broadcast, but she’s horrible.

No, no, no…I mean I hear stuff like that even when the TV is off.

Lol

The broadcast is horrible because with the woman there are too many damn people talking and she sounds like a golf commentator.

mplspug wrote:

So it’s not me?

And I don’t know who this lady is on the broadcast, but she’s horrible.

lol, i said the same thing to my wife while watching, she was obviously nervous, but why bring her out for the playoffs when she’s obviously not ready…

In one respect I feel bad for her because what do they have like 6 commentators? They are all stepping over themselves. Why can’t we just have Doc, a color guy and a guy between the benches like they normally do.

Her delivery is very poor, like she’s covering golf.

Its AJ Mlezko, she is a US Olympic Champion in hockey. I actually like listening to her. Her first NHL game was March 6th so she will certainly get better with time. I would rather listen to her than Pierre McGuire ranting about what college a certain played for blah blah blah.
Doc is far and away the best, but he cannot do every game and only seems to do the Pens or whatever BIG market team is left until the Finals.

Doc and Gord Murphy are the two best hands down, Doc just gets more animated…I like Joe Benninantti & Kenny Alberts too…

CaptainMusky wrote:

would rather listen to her than Pierre McGuire ranting about what college a certain played for blah blah blah.

Well there is that! Hopefully she gets better if this is what she wants to do as a living. She certainly isn’t the first hockey player to get into the business and most are a little rough to start.

mplspug wrote:

Well there is that! Hopefully she gets better if this is what she wants to do as a living. She certainly isn’t the first hockey player to get into the business and most are a little rough to start.

I didn’t mean it in any derogatory way, just trying those to help out with who she is since they may not have heard of her. I had no idea who she was either until I looked her up.
I would agree that she does sound a awful lot like Dottie Pepper who does golf.