When you buy an NHL team, you get to try building a Stanley Cup-winner any way you like. That’s the return you get when you fork over many millions of dollars. But what owning a team doesn’t do is provide you a window into the minds of that team’s supporters. And when you start saying things like “doing ‘X’ isn’t what our fans would want…, it should be concerning to that fan base.
Case in point: Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold’s comments Wednesday to intrepid Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Michael Russo regarding his team’s early exit in this season’s playoffs. In describing the disappointment of the Wild’s five-game, first-round loss to the Blues, Leipold said his franchise would never clean house and embark on a full rebuild in order to draft a generational player such as Edmonton’s Connor McDavid or Toronto’s Auston Matthews.
“It’s not a model I’m willing to take,… Leipold said of that management strategy. “That’s not a model that I think our fans want.…
I’m sure there’s a percentage of Wild fans who agree with Leipold’s stance and don’t care to see the team stripped down in order to build a different core that will have a better chance to compete with the big guns in the Western Conference. In fairness, Minnesota did post the best regular-season point total in the club’s history this past year, and GM Chuck Fletcher and his staff have developed some depth in many key areas. But the notion fans wouldn’t sit through a significant retooling – especially a fan base as relentlessly supportive of the franchise as Wild fans have been since NHL hockey returned to Minnesota 17 years ago – doesn’t make sense to me.
If it’s not working, the last thing I think many Wild fans would want is for the roster to remain largely intact and return year after year with similar results. If the mix isn’t right – if the chemistry isn’t there, or there’s no elite first-line center who can push the team to new heights – why wouldn’t Minnesota's fans take their lumps if it meant having their best shot at winning a few years down the line? …¨…¨
This is the part of the column where you have to note there’s no single guaranteed method by which to win a Cup, and that any team could wind up at the bottom of the standings for years by changing their core. But the larger question – the one that is far more definitive in the answers to it – is that you don’t and can’t acquire that first-rate center via trade or free agent signing. Once in a blue moon, the stars may align and allow a team to land an impact pivot who can help them for an entire competitive cycle, but 99.9 percent of the time, the draft is the only way that type of player becomes your team’s property.
This is how the league is designed. Dynasties usually don’t happen because of the salary cap, because of skilled players’ loyalties to the team that drafted them, and because there are so few generational talents down the middle. So while it sounds great to say you’re not going to conduct major surgery to your lineup in order to bring in such a talent, you’re effectively closing off all possibilities a Sidney Crosby, Matthews or McDavid will wear your team’s jersey one day.
And that’s a shame, because I think Minnesotans would absolutely be prepared to suffer in the short-term if the result was they’d be able to cheer for a true phenom for a decade and then some. These aren’t fair-weather fans we’re talking about here. If they’re aware a plan is in place to make the franchise as good as any in the league one day, they’ll be willing to support a group that’s not as good as many teams in the league today.
Maybe I’m wrong and Fletcher & Co. can figure out a way to shape this team into a bona fide championship front-runner in the years ahead. But as it stands, I don’t believe they’ve got the components to do so at present, or in the next couple of seasons. And I think a sophisticated fan base like the one in Minnesota has its doubts, too.
No model is flawless, otherwise all teams would be employing it. But the model that has helped produce some of the most thrilling, dangerous squads in the league in the salary cap era shouldn’t be shot down by any NHL owner – particularly because of a perception fans wouldn’t buy into it.
Fans want a winner, and don’t give a tinker’s damn whether you get there by hook, crook or extended basement residency. As long as you get there, the gain makes the pain worthwhile.