Dan Wallace: Fenton's First Wild Camp Opens Today

Well rude awakening or not for the current lot of Wild players, they still know that Fenton is limited in his ability to make large scale changes at this point. Too many NMC's and NTC's with bloated cap hits on this rapidly aging roster.

I wouldn't necessarily call this squad the "most vanilla" in the NHL... If they're playing a team game they can be just as exciting as any other team in the league.

A far cry from the days of Jacques Lemaire and the ol' Trap system.

But with that said, this squad does have a tendency to look vanilla during stretches. I can't help but think that the high number of injuries to key players haven't been a big part of holding them back though.

Every team deals with it, I know, but this club is not deep enough to withstand those injuries. They have to find a way to stay somewhat healthy. Or they may not even have to worry about losing a playoff series this season, they might just not make the post season at all.

I know Gump is not going to like this, but I am hoping some of the new excitement comes from players like Dumba, as the reins are released a little more on him. With a lot of scoring defensemen in the WC, like Doughty, Burns, Subban, Klingberg and now EK...would like to see Dumba moving into that group. Just really pushing the offensive tempo.

But I do agree, injuries to supposedly key cogs on the Wild roster, especially last year, just seemed to put them into a negative stance for every game. I am hoping that players want to be here, so guys like Nino, Coyle, JEE and Brodin really start to "ride the lightning" in games and have career years. Would make for a really fun season to watch.