Hockey-78

I'd rather think this is a perfect chance to take it to the chin, miss the playoffs for an eye-opener to the owner.

Well, there goes Iowa's season then.

Thinking requires information. Per CapFriendly: PHI forwards 27.6, TO 25.5 PHI D-men 26.6, TO 25.4 Maple Leafs clearly have a much younger roster.

Kahkonen named AHL goalie of the month in February. Kahkonen's month started with five consecutive victories, pushing his franchise-long win streak to seven games. Set the Wild's franchise record for single-season wins by a netminder with his 24th victory of the year. Kahkonen becomes the first repeat monthly award winner in team history. [Hidden Content] Sounds like a pretty decent 4th(!) round pick to me... the Wild management can only screw this up by hanging on to Dubnyk.

I heard that there were headlines in some Finnish media that he had a one-night stand with a porn star and according to his wife adultery was the ultimate reason for their divorce. Unsurprisingly, being the consummate team player he is he had a prenuptial agreement and Mrs. gets nothing. So I guess he's in a hurry to create some favorable on ice headlines...

Politician. Interesting to see how he "developes the development" of Kahkonen. He's seriously tearing it up in Iowa. His numbers for the past 6 weeks are breathtaking, another SO last night.

Stalock and Dubnyk are providing very average/below average goaltending. Kahkonen is undoubtedly the hottest goalie in the AHL. Now they've even stopped giving starts to Robson. I'd be very surprised to find out that the Wild management are content to carry on with this Duo of Averages and let Kahkonen continue to hone his skills in the minors. That's just clueless.

1,020 people are talking about this Frank Seravalli reporting that the Islanders are working on a deal to land Zach Parise from the Minnesota Wild. Andrew Ladd would be part of the return going to Minneapolis. Parise has five years remaining on his current deal at $7.5M, while Ladd has three years at $5.5M. Too good for the Wild. BG has to promise Lamoriello a night with Bill's wife or anything else to get it done. This deal would be a big part of a genuine and successful rebuild.

Hopefully this is Dubnyk's last start in the Wild jersey. Is there a playoff team in need for an experienced back-up goalie? The Canes maybe?

Yes but if Zucker would've been say the best goal scorer then I don't know if BG would've pulled the trigger. Zucker doing nothing just made the move as a very sensible thing to do, forced to make room for Kaprizov or not.

Maybe I could have worded it less straight forwardly... well, I definitely think he won't play for any other team since he didn't want to get traded to a playoff team. He has three kids and is in the middle of a divorce process. Sounds to me that played a major factor in not wanting to be moved to anywhere else. Obviously I'm not close to Guerin so I don't know what the heck he's thinking but since he asked Koivu to waive his clause I naturally thought he was unhappy with his on-ice performances. But...could he had in mind to trade Koivu and then sign another contract with him as a UFA? That would have been clever. But since we all know Koivu isn't a team player he declined. So if BG is indeed happy with Koivu's level of play he now begs him to stay for another year...? A distinct, but A possibility I guess.

I know you weren't. I just wanted to lay it out how I see it. Outside of this board I've been told to be very capable of analytical thinking... Since Guerin would go on and trade Zucker tells me he too thinks it's time for bigger changes, and it was a good trade. Although when an average Wild looks back and sees what players have been moved within a year (Zucker, Granlund, Coyle and Niederreiter, the four most promising forward prospects) you'd think the front office has zero clue what changes SHOULD take place. Well, 3 of those were on Fenton so Guerin has a pretty good record so far. But yeah, I would be surprised to see Koivu getting an extension especially for a sizable amount of money.

There's not much Koivu can offer atm. And he most likely won't develop anything new during the summer. Basically he's just a warm body filler from now on. So I'm thinking by taking someone say 10 years younger Guerin takes a calculated but minimal risk. In Koivu the Wild loses some FO prowess, decent positioning and defensive play... not much, his legs have gone. I don't know how many OK 4th line centers there are available but IMO it's better to pay around $1 mil. to anyone not named Koivu than say $2-3 mil. to Koivu. Even in the worst case you get better wheels and effort. And now that even his marriage is on the rocks, he might have trouble focusing on hockey. Might be heading back to Finland.

This also means Koivu won't be offered an extension for next season. And since he's reluctant to play anywhere else and there's probably close to zero demand for his services... in essence this means Koivu's NHL career is over.

Unfortunately the Wild wouldn't get as many picks... Maybe. Or maybe some teams believe they will get as good goaltending from Kahkonen as their getting now... with a loss less money. The Devils won't want to pay Schneider $6 mil. a year for the next two seasons, nor the Wings re-signing Howard, the Kings want to carry on with Quick for three more seasons, $5.8 each? No. Martin Jones has underperformed for two seasons now with a heavy salary, the Flyers don't have a #2 goalie... And if his current level of play just continues, I don't see how he could settle for a third season in the minors when he's already had a couple of games with the big boys. Not if he's ambitious and not a sheep.