wild/nhl

Where did management go so wrong? With no salary cap room, no free agents worth spending a buck eighty five for, and a draft that looks like it will leave the cupboard bare, the future looks bleak indeed. Looks like the Frozen Four will be the last sellout the X will see for many moons.

According to the NOTES section at the bottom of this article, the Red Wings were also "short-handed," so perhaps a better excuse for the Wild's terrible play is in order, huh? BTW: According to the radio broadcast, the Wild "left Havlat, Madden, and Zidlicky home" for this portion of the roadtrip. Here's an idea: Why don't we leave Richards home for the rest of it?!

I liked the energy of the team today and I give the credit to the young players called up. If the 2011-12 team plays at that level thoughout the season, they will be fun to watch and should win a decent number of games. Then as the young players develope and we add a few decent veterans who can score we will have a pretty good team in a couple of years. It should not be too hard to find a few veterans who can score 15+ goals like several of our current over paid veterans. Go Wild!!

I too liked the play/hustle of the young players today (falk, mcmillan, gillies, noreau, stoner-okay,spugeon-but he is sooo tiny). Anyway, it was refreshing to see a some wild players actually hustling out there. I almost cannot watch Burns anymore, did you see the turnover he had AGAIN at the blueline in which he then took out koivu, resulting in odd man break and goal, and then his horrible dive in which he made Holmstrom look gretzky-like. Pathetic, please get rid of this guy. I have been a huge critic of richards, but you cant blame burns sloppy, careless play on TR.

The Wild will paying Nystrom 1.4M over the two years instead of any one of these random Houston Areos forwards that could reproduce his nonexistent production at a 600K price.

Anyone know what kind of stipulations are in place regarding trades and contracts? Does the NHL have rules similar to the NBA such that contract values for players traded have to be for roughly the same dollar amount? If so, how does this work with trading veteran players for draft picks? (Wishing the Willies would trade Burns, Schultz, Nystrom, Backstrom, and a few more.)

Watching the game yesterday gave me two insights. 1) Todd Richards has to go, there is no team defense these guys are just skating all over like a midget hockey team. I know Richards wants to play a up tempo game but you still have to play team defense. 2) You are going to have to blow this thing up and trade the players that are hamstringing your payroll (Backstrom 6mil, Havlat 5mil, Burns 4mil)and there are probably a few more that go be let go.

21 GP 0 4 4 -15, 17GP 1 3 4 -12. When calling-out certain players, I wonder whose statistics these are that the fans in general never call-out because they are from MN or are a favorite? Those statistics are after Feb 18th to make them consistent. Shouldn't they have been contributing more down the stretch as well? Excuses for there play are presented virtually 100% of the time, correct?

"But the reality is the Red Wings, who spend the same $59 million on payroll as the Wild, are bigger, faster and better by a wide margin even when the Wild is healthy." Hardly seems like it's Richard's fault.

Nic, the NHL does not require the same $ contracts for trade values. So, one team can trade a 7 mil. dollar player for a 2 mil. dollar player. That being said, the NHL has a salary cap. This is the amount over which teams are not allowed to go as a whole team in player paid salary. So, if I team with a 2 mil. dollar player would like to trade for a 7 mil. dollar player, they would need at least 5 mil. cap room. (And a lot of teams don't have this.) Of course, the other team would have to be willing to lose there 7 mil. guy, which isn't common. And yes, we can also trade guys for draft picks. If you want to know the salaries of any NHL players, a website called 'capgeek.com' has a very easily navigatable set of information.