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What should Fentons first "tweak" be as the Wilds new GM?


sweetshot

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Re-sign Zucker?

Trade Coyle?

Trade Nino?

Name a new Captain?

Do something with Ennis?

Cut Koivu's left hamstring? (He'll quit the game)

Change the lockerroom(team) heirarchy?

Ideas?

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51 minutes ago, sweetshot said:

Re-sign Zucker?

Trade Coyle?

Trade Nino?

Name a new Captain?

Do something with Ennis?

Cut Koivu's left hamstring? (He'll quit the game)

Change the lockerroom(team) heirarchy?

Ideas?

 

Way too soon to tell that.  Right now Fenton is probably quickly evaluating the assets he has.  I don't think we'll see anything really jaw dropping.  If we deal one or more of #16, #22 or #3 it would be a surprise to me.  Cutting Koivu's hamstring...while I'd be ok with that...the still far too large cap hit would remain; although it might let you put him on LTIR, but the problem is we'll probably need to save that for Parise or Suter if they're not ready to go at the start of the season.  Ennis might be a buyout...but that won't really change the culture of this team one bit.  New captain?  Meh, while I'd welcome it...its mostly a superficial title on this club anyways.  

 

If I was GM...I'd sell off everything I could.  Its flawed and its only going to get worse, not better.  

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Secondary scoring.  The Wild were basically a one line team, shut down Granlund/Staal/Zucker and they were toast. Koivu is aging (badly) El Nino has a great game one in every three, a bad one and then one in which he is a non factor. Coyle looks like a star in spurts but hasn't had a proper role fleshed out. None of this would have happened if Zach Parise were alive of course, lol.

 

  The defense is four deep in Suter/Dumba/Spurgeon/Brodin and with defense being a premium if you are able to hold a team for ransom and can add a top six forward, preferably a 2C allowing Coyle to slot onto his natural slot on the wing alongside Niederreiter or Parise on the second line I say you have to at least have the conversation. Teams with one line can make the playoffs, the Wild and Flyers are living proof of that. They just get knocked out quickly in the first round. 

 

  Just a Wings fans two cents.

 

 

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@yave1964 the problem with the Wild is they want every line to be balanced. For the past 5 years the younger players have out-scored the 'favored vets' by a landslide when you compare their lopsided ice time. In those same 5 years you have their core veterans saying the younger players need to "step up" by they themselves are pretty much off the score sheets. They score, sure, but they're on the ice twice as much. Up until last year you hardly if ever saw Zucker or Nino on the PP. Instead as I've coined the phrase 'the best penalty killer on the ice for a Wild power play is Mikko Koivu." Then add any of the other vets in recent years and you have a bunch of ice time hogs completely impressed with themselves skating around not being challenged, and forgetting to take a damn shot on net closer than 25 feet out. There's no drives on net, no aggression, no one clogging the middle... Too afraid is my guess.

 

In recent years the 'core leaders' of the club would dilly-dally around and burn about 1:30-1:40 off the clock during a 2:00 minute PP and with 20 to 30 seconds left on the clock they'd send out the 2nd PP crew and some real havoc would be made. Crap like that makes our eyes bleed yet they continued that trend for much of Yeo's coaching stint here. Last year was a little better but not much. The minute Staal-Zucker-Nino get into form on the PP they blow it up and step on their own throats.

 

MANY Wild fans who just came here do believe there's players behind most the personnel decisions and through 3 head coaches now the same old crap like that is still happening.

 

I firmly believe we've made such a stink about it they decided to shut down their message board as a result. One can say we're angry fans but mostly we're a hell of a lot wiser than most and they know it.

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@rottenrefs

 

  I watch more hockey than I should (a hockey loving wife helps, lol) and my take on the Wild hasn't changed, they need center help more than any one area even before Staal came aboard I was shaking my head, wondering how the obvious was not seen by their GM. Staal has been great but is aging. Now what?

  Coyle reminds me of a favorite of mine, Boone Jenner in Columbus. Jenner is a very good two way forward in the middle six, leave him on the wing and he is fine but they keep moving him back to the dot where he fails and a cycle of frustration sets in. Same with Coyle, he plays center just well enough that they move him there out of need and his overall game slips, leave him on the wing, you have a nice 45 point responsible winger who plays solid middle six minutes.

  The problem at center, Granlund came up as one but is best suited as a winger, Koivu is aging badly, who knows what Eriksson Ek is yet, leaving Staal to do more or less all the offensive zone faceoffs and heavy lifting on the PP. with so much money spent on the wing, a trade seems to be the thing to balance out the roster just not sure how much they can get for one of the wingers not named Zucker or Granlund and trading one of them is not the answer anyway. I think trading a d-man for a 2C is the logical move. I could be wrong of course, trust me my wife says I am quite often, lol

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@yave1964 a bigger problem with the Wild is they have a trio of leadership players who have direct contact with the owner and former GM and influence what goes on with other players instead of checking their egos and selfishness at the door. They need to be stopped from undermining their head coaches, be told to shut up and get back to playing hockey and stop micromanaging the team.

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1 hour ago, yave1964 said:

@rottenrefs

 

  I watch more hockey than I should (a hockey loving wife helps, lol) and my take on the Wild hasn't changed, they need center help more than any one area even before Staal came aboard I was shaking my head, wondering how the obvious was not seen by their GM. Staal has been great but is aging. Now what?

  Coyle reminds me of a favorite of mine, Boone Jenner in Columbus. Jenner is a very good two way forward in the middle six, leave him on the wing and he is fine but they keep moving him back to the dot where he fails and a cycle of frustration sets in. Same with Coyle, he plays center just well enough that they move him there out of need and his overall game slips, leave him on the wing, you have a nice 45 point responsible winger who plays solid middle six minutes.

  The problem at center, Granlund came up as one but is best suited as a winger, Koivu is aging badly, who knows what Eriksson Ek is yet, leaving Staal to do more or less all the offensive zone faceoffs and heavy lifting on the PP. with so much money spent on the wing, a trade seems to be the thing to balance out the roster just not sure how much they can get for one of the wingers not named Zucker or Granlund and trading one of them is not the answer anyway. I think trading a d-man for a 2C is the logical move. I could be wrong of course, trust me my wife says I am quite often, lol

I agree with you totally. That was what pissed me of so much about the vegas thing. We gave up 2 forwards instead of 1 defenseman. 1 forward was a center, which we need badly, and after seeing Seeler play we could afford to lose a defenseman. 

 

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Buying out Ennis might be an easy first move for Fenton.  With one more year of a 4.6M cap hit a buyout would result in a cap hit reduction of just over 2.4M next year and adding on 1.2M the following year.  That extra money could be used to sign the RFA Zucker while opening up a roster spot.

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5 hours ago, rottenrefs said:

@yave1964 a bigger problem with the Wild is they have a trio of leadership players who have direct contact with the owner and former GM and influence what goes on with other players instead of checking their egos and selfishness at the door. They need to be stopped from undermining their head coaches, be told to shut up and get back to playing hockey and stop micromanaging the team.

I'm convinced most of this influence will leave with Fletcher. During the press conference in which Liepold announced that he would not bring back GMCF, he made a comment about wanting a GM that didn't "feel an ownership to certain players". I'm not exactly sure what he meant by this but what I think he was saying is GMCF had a player or 2 that if any decisions regarding those players were to be made, they would be made by only him. Fenton, as far as we know, has no "ownership" of any players on the Wild's roster.

 If Suter has the owners ear which I believe he does, then obviously that influence will remain.

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The first tweak should be to let the Fans be fans and not try and downplay the criticism that well at least most of us on here provide negative or positive, it's just asinine to have an organization care so much about hiding it when they should really listen to it  and not try and make it seem like it's not there and maybe they could benefit from it. I mean it's just like when our vets were complaining about fans booing them for bad play and they got so defensive about it and were like that's totally unacceptable behavior as a fan. So yeah Fenton should start there and I also think he needs to fix the players attitudes or well players like Suter Koivu Parise etc but I know it will fall on deaf ears.

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4 hours ago, sweetshot said:

I'm convinced most of this influence will leave with Fletcher. During the press conference in which Liepold announced that he would not bring back GMCF, he made a comment about wanting a GM that didn't "feel an ownership to certain players". I'm not exactly sure what he meant by this but what I think he was saying is GMCF had a player or 2 that if any decisions regarding those players were to be made, they would be made by only him. Fenton, as far as we know, has no "ownership" of any players on the Wild's roster.

 If Suter has the owners ear which I believe he does, then obviously that influence will remain.

Issue being is Leipold straight up came out and said he thinks the roster is fine and only a minor tweak is needed. Doesn't matter what the GM feels if the owner is going to "feel an ownership to certain players". Unless Leipold comes straight out and eats those words in front of us about this team is only a minor tweak away except the next 6 years to be the same crap we have been seeing.

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@sweetshot yet as owner, Craig Leipold stated he made his mind up about not re-signing Fletcher last year by not extending his contract then. In the meantime the team continued to struggle with whatever the hell's been ailing them behind the scenes. So much that articles have been written hinting at problems we've been aware of for at least 3-4 years (and likely before that but the issues weren't as bad.)

 

The same owner, who when finding out Parise and Suter went behind Yeo's back to hire Adam Oates to help with the power play... Apparently has done nothing to strip them of their power pull and instead fired his head coach; only to let the same garbage take place with the new head coach. While that all occurred on Fletcher's watch, Leipold (as we know) fired Fletcher and sought another GM to replace him... As long as most everything doesn't change.

 

That's one hell of a message Leipold has let unfold.

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On 5/29/2018 at 5:06 PM, bbgarnett said:

@Tomdog  totally our scouting staff has been horrible and seems like it always has been.

 

That's because fundamentally it hasn't changed that much.  Paul Charles, Guy Lapointe and a few others have been there since Risebrough was GM.  Leipold talked about wanting a fresh set of eyes...those SAME scouting eyes have been helping shape this team forever, maybe that ought to change.  

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17 hours ago, rottenrefs said:

@sweetshot yet as owner, Craig Leipold stated he made his mind up about not re-signing Fletcher last year by not extending his contract then. In the meantime the team continued to struggle with whatever the hell's been ailing them behind the scenes. So much that articles have been written hinting at problems we've been aware of for at least 3-4 years (and likely before that but the issues weren't as bad.)

 

The same owner, who when finding out Parise and Suter went behind Yeo's back to hire Adam Oates to help with the power play... Apparently has done nothing to strip them of their power pull and instead fired his head coach; only to let the same garbage take place with the new head coach. While that all occurred on Fletcher's watch, Leipold (as we know) fired Fletcher and sought another GM to replace him... As long as most everything doesn't change.

 

That's one hell of a message Leipold has let unfold.

 

This all the way. As a fan you got to step back and go wait a second, why did Parise and Suter run off and do their own thing if they are suppose to be the "leaders"? PP is a team game. There is 3 other guys on the ice. You want to improve you need to work with the other guys. Get better communication, better game plans, etc. They flip the finger to the coaching and other players and went off. In this case Koivu was a better leader than these two. Funny thing is they did this and their punishment was watching a coach they didn't respect get fired. The GM and Owner put it on the coach. Funny thing is after the same results happen and now the owner fires the GM. The owner is getting way to personally involved with the players and more worried about being their friend than actually making a good team. I doubt anything changes with this team unless Fenton convinces Leipold to back off and let him do the GM work or they get very lucky on a few good pickups. But Fenton also needs to strip power away from Parise, Suter and Koivu and let them know they will riding second fiddle to everything.

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18 hours ago, rottenrefs said:

@sweetshot yet as owner, Craig Leipold stated he made his mind up about not re-signing Fletcher last year by not extending his contract then. In the meantime the team continued to struggle with whatever the hell's been ailing them behind the scenes. So much that articles have been written hinting at problems we've been aware of for at least 3-4 years (and likely before that but the issues weren't as bad.)

 

The same owner, who when finding out Parise and Suter went behind Yeo's back to hire Adam Oates to help with the power play... Apparently has done nothing to strip them of their power pull and instead fired his head coach; only to let the same garbage take place with the new head coach. While that all occurred on Fletcher's watch, Leipold (as we know) fired Fletcher and sought another GM to replace him... As long as most everything doesn't change.

 

That's one hell of a message Leipold has let unfold.

I was only referring to Liepold's comment about what he didn't want his new GM to have, someone who felt an ownership of certain players. Obviously he thought Fletcher did feel an ownership of certain players(Koivu, Parise) otherwise why mention it as something he didn't want his new GM to have. With GMCF now gone, that ownership of certain players, as Liepold called it, will be gone as well.

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20 hours ago, EJ0226 said:

Issue being is Leipold straight up came out and said he thinks the roster is fine and only a minor tweak is needed. Doesn't matter what the GM feels if the owner is going to "feel an ownership to certain players". Unless Leipold comes straight out and eats those words in front of us about this team is only a minor tweak away except the next 6 years to be the same crap we have been seeing.

 Liepold made the comment that GMCF felt an ownership to certain players. He wasn't referring to himself.

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3 hours ago, TonyOday said:

1. Buyout Ennis

2. Re-sign Zucker and Dumba

3. Improve the game ops 

4. Ban Prince songs from the building...

Love #4 I think it’s insane that they need music to pump up the fans after a goal 

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5 hours ago, sweetshot said:

I was only referring to Liepold's comment about what he didn't want his new GM to have, someone who felt an ownership of certain players. Obviously he thought Fletcher did feel an ownership of certain players(Koivu, Parise) otherwise why mention it as something he didn't want his new GM to have. With GMCF now gone, that ownership of certain players, as Liepold called it, will be gone as well.

I did understand your original comment about his new GM not having ownership over players... Everyone gets that but what I did was put the cart before the horse. Players were bad and apparently Leipold likes them the most. lol

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rebuild, rebuild, rebuild... blow up the roster Fenton. It will be painful for a few years (used to that anyways) but outcome/payoff later is worth the wait granted I can not handle 18 more years but 3 or 5 is possible.

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21 hours ago, sweetshot said:

 Liepold made the comment that GMCF felt an ownership to certain players. He wasn't referring to himself.

Yes he did but by also saying that he wouldn't hire a GM who told him that big changes need to be done. He only wanted to hear very minor little tweak. This shows the owner felt ownership to certain players. If he thinks the route Fletcher was going wasn't right you have to be open to hear what other GMs will see and want to change otherwise why bother even firing Fletcher. Leipold fired Fletcher in hopes to hire Fletcher with that statement.

Also that picture of Suter, Parise and Koivu at presser for Fenton speaks volumes. They looked like 3 very unhappy owners. As a owner, if I seen my 3 supposedly stars and leaders like that I would be calling them in and having a talk. Trust me, Leipold feels like he has some ownership to certain players.

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20 hours ago, Tomdog said:

Love #4 I think it’s insane that they need music to pump up the fans after a goal 

Apparently you haven't been to a Wild game lately. It's usually so quiet in there you can hear someone fart on the bench when your sitting in the nosebleeds...

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1. Completely overhaul the scouting and drafting department. It might have to wait until after this draft but I feel like this is the #1 thing that needs to be done for this team to be successful in the future.

 

2. Contact GMs from every single team asking what they need or want prior to the draft. If you can get a late round draft pick or raw young prospect for Iowa in exchange for a guy like Ennis or Foligno.. do it. It beats buying Ennis out(like people have mentioned) and still frees up roster spots and cap space.

 

3. Do not rush prospects to the main roster.. and do not trade them off before you know what you have! Iowa should be a feeder system for the Wild.. not for other teams when the GM decides to trade off a prospect just for them to thrive wherever they end up.

 

4. Take the route Fletcher didn't.. get into contact and build a strong relationship with Kaprizov and his agent so he actually wants to come over here and play when he's out of his current contractual obligations.

 

5. Using the Prince goal song was absolutely awesome after his passing imo but I think it should have just lasted for a year as a tribute to one of our own. I'd pick a new song.. and when I say new I mean completely new to the NHL. Don't go back to "crowd chant" and don't share a goal song with another team. 

 

6. Come in as a GM and not as their friend..  let the team know if they aren't showing maximum effort on the ice their ice time will be cut.. Reputation, personal relationship with the owner or gm, contract, veteran status all of that aside.. if you aren't giving your all on the ice you can and will be sat in the press box or replaced.

 

7. and this one is for Rotty.. if its something "in the water"... FILTER THE F'N WATER. 

 

edit: 8. Find some guys who aren't afraid to stick up for their teammates.. please.

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