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Alarms Should Be Sounding For Wild Changes

October 14, 2018, 3:22 PM ET [9 Comments]
Dan Wallace
Minnesota Wild Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Four games in and we know all we need to know about the 2018-19 Minnesota Wild.

They are a veteran team that was not one of the league's faster teams last season and they have certainly taken a significant step backward once again.

New GM, Paul Fenton tried diligently to make some offseason deals to adjust his roster but to no avail. The one saving grace is that he did not trade Jason Zucker the fastest most explosive player on the roster.

It is however time for some sort of roster adjustment.

The Eric Fehr, Matt Hendricks signings have failed miserably as neither player brings anything to the game on the ice. Great locker room presence means nothing for this team at this stage of their careers.

Bruce Boudreau can make the statements after each game how his team lacked the intensity needed at the beginning of each of the four games the Wild have played and how his team has been shown the tapes and they talk about it before every game. But the fact is Boudreau needs to step up and be held accountable for his own miscues.

Case in point, with the Wild holding a 4-3 lead and Carolina on the powerplay with the goaltender pulled giving them the 6 on 4 advantage, Boudreau sends out a forward combo of Mikko Koivu and Eric Fehr to preserve the one goal lead. The result of course was the game tying goal with an absolutely gassed Koivu and Fehr looking dazed and confused in the process.

Boudreau is absolutely one of the league's best coaches, but if he is unable to make the necessary adjustments in his own thought process as to who he can and cannot count on in the key spot the Wild's already troubled outlook becomes oh so bleak.

It is too early to panic for sure, but far from too early to recognize alarming deficiencies with the current makeup of the roster, as well as the distribution of ice time being given to veterans based on their past performance.

With Joel Eriksson Ek out for at least a week with a lower body injury it seems that a call up is in order and Matt Read would seem to be the obvious choice. Read is by no means the answer but at the very least he is faster than the than any of the players currently entrusted with 4th line minutes. Read actually played his way onto the roster in training camp but got pinched in the two-way contract game.

Fenton needs to go to work and find a player or two that are caught in numbers games with their current clubs. A move is needed to shake things up.
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