No Matter How Bad Things Get With The Blackhawks At Least We Aren't The Wild. Minnesota Fires GM After One Year
This week on Redline Radio I went through the John McDonough interview with Scott Powers and complained once again about the leadership because well…there’s plenty to complain about and speculate about heading into the 2019-20 season. I’ve done lots of complaining about the Blackhawks in general the last 36 months on the website. Sometimes the Hockey Gods just tap you on the head a little bit with some news that wakes you up a bit and today that news is that the Minnesota Wild continue to be a god damn mess. After just one short year, broken down in detail by the good fellas at CapFriendly above, Paul Fenton is OUT as the Minnesota Wild GM. I think most people looked at the State of the Minnesota Wild when Fenton was hired and realized that it was going to be a rebuilding project of sorts. Well everyone except for owner Craig Leipold
“After giving much thought to this difficult decision, I informed Paul today that he was not the right fit for our organization going forward. I believe we have a good hockey team, a team that will compete for a playoff spot this year, and I look forward to hiring a general manager that will help us win a Stanley Cup. I would like to thank Paul for his time with the Wild and wish him and his family the best in the future.”–Leipold
Buddy…let me tell you about your playoff aspirations for this year…
Not only are the Wild not looking like a playoff team, they’re looking like a team who will finish LAST in the Central Division. And you know what…it’s sad. It shows you just how hard it is to win the Stanley Cup. Your top guys need to be able to be the BEST guys on the best team. That is hard to find. It’s expensive. And it’s fleeting. The Wild had some VERY good teams under their last regime. They made the playoffs for six straight years. They just had one big problem in early in that stretch.
Stomped out for three straight years by a better team. The Wild went for broke and paid Parise and Suter to go with their #1 center Mikko Koivu. Parise-Suter-Koivu was just never better than Kane-Toews-Keith, not to mention the rest of the supporting cast the Hawks had in those years. It’s hard to find THOSE players. The franchise players. There’s so much to like about Parise, Suter, and Koivu, but they simply weren’t quite good enough in that era. It really makes you appreciate just how good we had it for a while
The flip side is that it also drives me CRAZY that the Blackhawks have wasted four straight years of Toews-Kane primes. They mismanaged the supporting cast, the draft, the cap, etc. Players like them don’t come around very often. That is why I am pulling my hair out and pointing fingers at management because it feels like they’ve moved on from them at times thinking that Dach, Strome, Boqvist, Debrincat are going to be able to form the next core. Those guys might be very good players one day. Debrincat already is. As good as they are…they’re probably not Toews and Kane. They could be sensational and maybe that’d make them just as effective as Parise and Suter…good enough to be an also ran.