Math

Even NHL.com uses sarcasm in their team reset articles. They wrote "key substractions", "Bitetto" and "Åberg" in the same sentence.

That's why you have all those beautiful job descriptions such as "second general advisor to the special team assistant coach", "special consultant of the third alternate scout assistant" or "second executive assistant to the alternate back-up goalie advisor". Seems that you are absolutely essential to the organization, but in fact you are just there and probably cut the lemons or prepare the warm-up towels.

First I thought it was a typical whining Québec thing: "Boohohooo, we lost, we have been robbed by the mean WC teams, it's the league's fault, let's have a second chance, we deserve it". But... no. And if the 2nd round also finish with upsetting surprises like the Blues out in 4 and the Bruins out in 4, would there be a "NHL Bracket Challenge Third Chance", and then a "Fourth chance" if the results don't please the majority of the predictions ?!?! Lame and Stupid. In that sense, why not replaying the 1st round for real ? All division winners are out, it's not normal, let's replay this. I'm 2-8 overall in the first round, and that could have been worse if I haven't picked the Blues in 6, my only fully correct prediction... And the guys who didn't pick TB for the cup, well, congratulations to them. There's one poster who picked the Isles as SC winner, and they actually win, big up and much respect for him, no more no less. I'll pass my turn on the losers' 2nd chance bracket.

The first thing to do in the offseason is to kidnap Fenton, Leipold and all the scouting staff around the 30th of June and put them in a bunker with no possibility to have any contact in the outer world (cut electricity, cellphones, internet, etc.). Then, free them around the 10th of July when we are absolutely sure that all old overpaid UFA have been signed elsewhere. Finally, use the usual BS to justify this ("it was a Coup from the Russians", "It's the NSA", "North Korea was behind all that", "Neil Armstrong never walked on he Moon", blah blah blah.)

That's a thing that drives me nutz! Honestly, I'm totally fine with losing if the guys give a 100% effort, young guys that are actually trying. Finishing the season like this is unacceptable, a real shame. For the last game, you want to finish well, playoffs or not. I watched the Habs' last game, and they really had a hard hit in the head when they failed to reach the postseason 24h before. But it didn't matter: they came strong, played Poehling who had a hatty and the SO winner in that game. Everybody gave the maximum in that game. As far as I loathe the Habs, I was jealous. They really managed to change the culture there and even if they didn't make it, they were all happy with this good ending because they all did the maximum. No cheaters. Another quick stories here (yeah, I love to dig them out these times): As I was still covering my team in a semi-final playoffs, we were leading 3-0 and as soon as we lost the game #4, everything collapsed. They tied the series 3-3 before going back at home to play the final game. We already knew that we would lose this one and I wrote the paper before the game. Of course, we lost it (at home in a packed and raucous arena), losing the series 4-3. Only One single player had the balls to say thanks to the fans, embarrassed and receiving beers and spits. I didn't need to change one single comma to the article and when I entered the team's restaurant like at midnight, some players were partying and joking. An absolute disgrace. Only the late Zarley Zalapski (who ended his career in Switzerland) was dramatically shocked. Only him. At that point, it is a whole culture that has to be changed. Like the Oilers are trying to do, unsuccessfully so far, for years and where the Wild is going through right now made me remind of that story because of the similarities. If this is true, Boudreau has to resign. No choice. It's called micromanagement and no coach should be tolerating that. I'm already afraid for the return... Let me guess: Zucker to the Isles for Andrew Ladd.

About the jeseys, just a quick story here: we have a baseball pro team here in Québec City named "Capitales" with an "e" that is playing in the Canam league, a independant baseball league. Sometimes they play interleague games and when the St-Paul Saints came here to play a series some time ago, they wore Nordiques, resp. North Stars gear especially for that occasion. That was quite fun to watch.

I exactly get it. Same feeling for me. For guys in North America, the reason of being a fan of this or that team is pretty obvious: it's your origin place, the city you live in, the place with natural bonds I would say. As a former european living 4000 miles away, it's less evident. Sometimes it's just a detail, a friend who's a fan, something special, the logo you just like, a gift... In my case, I became a North Star fan because former North Star defender Frantisek Musil was a friend of my mother (both came from the same city in Czech Rep. and were nearly neighbors). So I received a North Star jersey when I was a kid, and I also met Musil during the summer break back in Czech Republic. Furthermore, I liked the jersey very much, I was the only guy with a green jersey in my hockey team, that was original and kinda cool. And it all started from that (I'm a Raider fan because I received a Raider keyholder and a Raider magazine with a beautiful girl sitting on on a helmet in the front page; I'm also a Cubs fan just because I found the name "Cubs" cool...) Anyway, after the Stars departure, I lost interest in the NHL but I was thrilled when they announced a new franchise for Minnesota (drawback point was, I had to wait like 3 more years). But when the team name was chosen, I was like: "Wild ?!?! Meh... weird..." (I was rooting for Northern Lights). The main color was green, which was essential to me (Like above, sometimes it's just as stupid as that), but the combo forest green/iron red was unfortunate and led to all jokes about X-mas. Moreover, the early 2000's was a terrible period in terms of hockey uniforms design. The Wild somehow avoided a bit horror things like the Preds'yellow mustard or the fisherman Islander, but still. During the first Stars-Wild game, I was jealous. Damn the Stars had a gorgeous jersey while the Wild had this strange color combo with the clunky Wild shoulder patch. Being a original North Star fan, I always have the feeling that something is lacking, a thing that could finish a 100%-completion of this team embracement. Sorry for the long personal post, I quite lose it when all this things come into my mind

I remember exactly this thread in the old message boards and we had a lot of interesting discussion about it. Almost 8 years from and I feel it was yesterday... I wrote a whole bunch of thoughts in an "outside" perspective and I would love to try to dig a bit in my memories and try to end up with a novel... As in some of the moves there were a lot unhappy circumstances that led to the move. Of course, Norm Green but I won't depict him as the 100% villain. Like @ClusterChuck said, the franchise didn't help itself a lot. That was also the beginning of the Buttman's era and the commisioner was hired for one thing: develop the hockey market in the south, no matter what. After the North Stars, the Jets left with the Nordiques and the Whalers. Meanwhile new expansion teams took place in Florida, Tampa Bay, Anaheim. The timing was pretty bad. Also, the building. It's the same of what the Senators, the Panthers and the Coyotes are through today: a facility in a no man's land. Having the Met Center in the suburb was not ideal at all and it needed upgrades and renovations. The thing that still bugs me is why it was not possible to play at the new Target Center in downtown Minneapolis ?? I heard the argument that is was due to advertisement contracts and sponsoring (Pepsi vs Coca Cola or something like that). A lot of places use the same building for both basketball and hockey and I'm still wondering why it was not an option at that time. And speaking about basketball, The Timberwolves was new in the city and there was some hype around them. I do understand that the city didn't want to put taxpayers' money again in a sport building, but it didn't seem to have a strong willingness to do something in favor of the franchise. Again, bad timing on that too... Finally, the other college hockey was working pretty well. So the people had this to think about. Why paying a huge amount of money to see a loser team why other teams in which we better identify ourselves are winning, and moreover for less money ? You can correct me if I'm wrong on certain aspects, but yes the loss stung a lot but I don't put the blame solely on Norm Green. Dis he want to move at the very first second he purchased the team ? Maybe, maybe not. Did he play fair? Maybe not. But I'm still buying the argument that the main reason for the move was the economic situation and the opportunity to grow a market elsewhere with all the perspectives it implied. Everybody had its part of guilt at some extent.

No one will move. Buttman is totally committed now on retaining teams in their current market, no matter what. Panthers signed a new lease with the BB&T center and the Sens will at the end find a new owner that will keep the team there, even if it makes no sense to have such an arena in the middle of nowhere. The league doesn't care about empty seats, even tho it's sad. The league care about overall revenues which are constantly increasing. That's all. Like in the case of the Thrashers, we never know 100% but it should take an extraordinary series of circumstances to see one of the two go.

I pretty much agree with @CreaseAndAssist (and good point about the AHL with its playoffs point of view). Not a Chiarelli or a Bergevin, but not a Poile either... He did some good moves, some bad ones and some terrible ones. I still have the Barker and the Burns deal stuck in my throat, but the last signings showed some improvements, however too late.

I'm all for the silver/black/white scheme, but please drop off the senseless klunky "LA" in the logo by keeping only the crown.

Not a Caps fan either, but actually do like the city. It's quite special to go to a US city where the highest building does not have more than 12 floors. And do not forget: it's the only city in the world where you could can go by mistake in a sports-gay bar, getting out of it drunk, then yelling "looook over there, it's the IMP boss. Hi IMF boss !" when it was actually the IMF boss over there...

I'm not a fan of Ovechkin, but looking at his carrer he had to win it at least once. Ironically, the Caps won it as they were not waited anymore after choking several times during the postseason. They had less pressure and that surely helped. Quite an abrupt finish for Vegas with this 4th straight loss, but reaching the final remains quite an astonishing performance. Again, one of the deciding part of the final was the tenure of Washington's bottom-6: their 3rd and 4th line were well above Vegas'. I'm wondering if Bergevin slept well that night, given the fact Smith-Pelly and Eller (who scored the tie-breaking and winning goal in game #5, respectively) were pretty much underestimated but key contributors in this final. Besides that, A little thought for Karl Alzner who claimed out loud when he signed with the Habs that "Montréal was closer to win a Cup than Washington"...

Some of the NHL jerseys I have: Minnesota North Stars - Green (1991) Minnesota North Stars - Green (1986) Minnesota North Stars - White (1991) - #23 Brian Bellows with Stanley Cup patch Minnesota North Stars - Black (1993) Minnesota North Stars - White (1993) Minnesota Wild - Green (2014) - #24 Derek Boogaard Winnipeg Jets - Blue (1985) - #10 Dale Hawerchuk Hartford Whalers - Green (1985) - #11 Kevin Dineen New Jersey Devils - Red (2000) - #4 Scott Stevens Phoenix Coyotes - Black (1996)

@rottenrefs And I'm wondering if your best buddy Fargocase will join as well

We became undesirable on the wild.com message boards, we therefore are no longer protected, let's be the Golden Knights of this forum !

Hi folks, Just landed here from the future late Wild forum. Same name, same avatar ;-)