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What Went Wrong?

April 7, 2019, 1:34 PM ET [3 Comments]
Dan Wallace
Minnesota Wild Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Now that the season is in the books officially and reality has set in that the Wild are spectators a few weeks earlier than they have been each of the previous six seasons.

So what went wrong, and are they better off by missing the dance than sneaking in with no realistic hope of a deep run?

Let's go to what went wrong first.

The season began with promise as the Wild got out of the gate strong and were for a short time in mid November right near the top of the Western Conference standings. However they never looked as if they could sustain that level of play with the lineup that was essentially the same one that has teased us quite often the last several seasons.

The problem however was, this year that same old lineup was just that a year older and a couple of steps slower. This was all very well known to new GM, Paul Fenton a year ago when he was hired to replace Chuck Fletcher.

That said Fenton had the ability to make some changes prior to the season and chose to wait in order for his chips to potentially increase in value.

That was not necessarily a bad decision however one could argue that he waited far too long to pull the trigger, waiting until the Wild had fallen completely out of playoff position before making his first significant trade.

The question if he was gun shy and afraid of making a mistake and that is why he waited so long? Well his first trade involving a key player from the Fletcher roster was exactly that, a mistake!

On the surface it raised doubt and the results confirmed those concerns. Nino Niederreiter had been misused and typecast here in Minnesota and the change of scenery as well as elevated status paid immediate dividends for the Hurricanes, while Victor Rask picked up right where he left off in Carolina providing little to no offense to a Wild team desperate for a spark.

The next moves by Fenton were very solid prying Ryan Donato from Boston in exchange for Charlie Coyle who despite being a fan favorite in Minnesota, was never going to be the player Fletcher had hoped he would become when he dealt Brent Burns to San Jose.

Kevin Fiala for Mikael Granlund again left many to scratch their heads and time will tell if this was a good move or not moving forward. I for one feel that it was a very smart deal that provides the Wild with a player that has high upside potential who will now most likely be on a bridge deal for a couple of seasons in which the Wild can get production at a bargain price. There is more that I really like about this transaction but that is for another day.

So what else went wrong?

The injury to Matt Dumba was a crushing blow to a team that struggled to generate offense to begin with. Dumba was well on his way to pushing a 30 goal season and had really come into his zone as an elite defenseman in the league.

There are still those around the league that will question if Dumba is of the league's elite, and to be honest who cares. They don't watch him play every game and only ho by what they have seen or worse read in the past.

The bottom line is the Wild were a "good, not great" team to begin with and when they lost the truly "great" player that they had, the road to the playoffs became all that much more difficult.

One can say that Mikko Koivu's injury contributed almost as much and there is some truth to that, however their fate had already been established by then in my opinion.

In some ways the Koivu injury may turn out to be a blessing as Bruce Boudreau was forced to not lean so heavily on the captain and disperse the responsibilities to many of the younger players.

The fact that the Wild were able to remain in the playoff race was not so much due to how they were performing as it was to the mediocrity of the others that found themselves on that wildcard bubble.

As we have talked about frequently over the last month and a half this offseason will be the most significant in Wild history and Paul Fenton is positioned to make this roster his.

Combine that with the fact that barring something unforeseen with the draft lottery the Wild will have the 11th selection in the draft and the opportunity to select a pretty good prospect in the process.

So no playoffs this year, and in reality having witnessed the last six playoff exits in the early rounds it does not feel much different.

Follow me on Twitter @dwallace17
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