ST. PAUL
The Wild are at a dead end.
Financially, developmentally and performance-wise they are standing at the end of the alley with their noses pushed up against the wall. There doesn't appear to be anywhere else to go. They are stuck.
Craig Leipold bought the team three years ago for a whopping $260 million. Now there are more non-sellout nights than sellout nights. The salary cap has risen. The team isn't good enough to raise ticket prices. There are no revenue-producing playoff series on the horizon. My guess is that Craig is taking a bath and that Bob Naegele Jr., who tripled his original investment, is chuckling in Florida.
The Wild are cutting corners. Just recently, Leipold ditched five employees from the business side of his hockey-arena operations in an effort to cut expenses.
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The team defeated the Dallas Stars 5-3 on Sunday to knock them out of the playoffs. Yippee! Norm Green sucks. But it really was small consolation. The Wild finished a well-deserved 12th in the 15-team Western Conference. They didn't underachieve and they didn't overachieve. They are what they are, which is incredibly mediocre.
Will coach Todd Richards be back? There are a couple of ways to look at it. Personally, I don't know how you can put him back out there again after two miserable seasons, the latter of which featured a complete and utter collapse in the final month. The first time the team loses back-to-back games next season, speculation about his job
security would start up all over again. Only louder.
But does Leipold want to pay off the final year of Richards' contract and then go out and hire someone else? Probably not. Remember that the Wild cafeteria, which used to serve top-end dishes to hockey VIPs attending the games, now features chicken sandwiches available for $10.
Since the Wild appear poised to deliver similar results again next season, you could make a case for letting Richards finish out his deal. But it could be a painful last go-round.
"It's hard right now," goalie Nik Backstrom said when asked what was missing. "You're just so emotional right now. In this league, you used to be able to get by playing 60 good games. Now it's 70 to 75. We played 82 games and we only won shots (outshot the opposition) in maybe 15. That means we are spending more time in our own zone. That's one thing."
That's a big thing. The Wild are offensively challenged. But there doesn't appear to be much help on the horizon. None of the late-season call-ups knocked anybody's socks off.
General manager Chuck Fletcher has been hampered by a lack of salary cap space. He's about to create a bunch of room as perhaps a half-dozen free agents aren't asked back. Andrew Brunette probably won't be back. With luck, Antti Miettinen won't either. How that fellow spent several seasons skating on the top line is one of the great mysteries in Wild history. He is a third-line winger if I ever saw one.
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However, this is the weakest crop in the history of NHL free agency. There's just no help out there. Fletcher will have to make some deals. He is going to have to be on top of his game this summer or the team could backslide even further. He's going to have to make some good moves just to stay even. He has had mixed results so far.
Trading Kim Johnsson and Nick Leddy to Chicago for Cam Barker was a disaster. Barker has been awful. Trading Benoit Pouliot to Montreal for Guillaume Latendresse looked like a steal at first. Then Latendresse apparently spent the last offseason snacking on Twinkies and sticks of butter, came to camp overweight and got hurt.
There has been a tendency to blame the previous regime for some of the current troubles. But there actually has been a great deal of turnover during the past two years. Look at the forward lines: Martin Havlat, Matt Cullen, Kyle Brodziak, Eric Nystrom, John Madden, Brad Staubitz, Latendresse and Chuck Kobasew are all Fletcher's guys.
On defense he has added Greg Zanon, Jared Spurgeon and Barker. Ancillary players Casey Wellman, Warren Peters, Drew Bagnall and Nate Prosser are newcomers, too. But the team still is spinning its wheels. And the up-tempo, exciting hockey we were promised rarely has materialized.
"Everybody has to realize that this is not the way we want to end things," Mikko Koivu said. "We had 82 games to prove we belong in the playoffs. We didn't."
They had 82 games last season, too, and didn't. So the Wild remain with their noses pressed against the wall. And Leipold must be wondering what he got himself into. Things have gone downhill since he walked in the door. The only possible way the Wild can increase revenue is to get into the playoffs. That seems unlikely. I don't know where that leaves them.
Perhaps they will install pay toilets in the concourses.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
