What I like about Fletch

I would be hard pressed to formulate an accurate opinion on the Minnesota Wild's new GM that would be accurate and hold true in the long-term, but I'll give you my first impressions, which I hope will not change. Likable, humble, genuine, knowledgeable, confident...are just a few words I would use to describe Minnesota's newest hockey professional. And what I really liked the most about Chuck Fletcher is that he actually came out and said IT during his very first press conference, the it being that all teams play some form of the 'trap'. Yes, it took all of about 1 or 2 questions from our reporters before one of them uttered the phrase 'trap' and whether or not the Wild would finally abandoned that type of system. I loved the answer Fletch gave because it exposed the lack of NHL knowledge that the newsman who did the asking actually had. Fletch said something to the effect that all NHL teams play some sort of a trap...and thus it was finally said by someone within the organization other than our previous and original leaders in Doug Risebrough and Jacques Lemaire. The old guard, GM Risebrough, had said this same thing for years. But the problem was that nobody would listen simply because his choice in a head coach, Lemaire, is known as the father of the defensive system. But now Wild fans and hopefully media writers will finally start putting that in their minds. I have contended this all along but as you may or may not know, the readership here is not what you would call wide-spread.

There is basically one thing that separates all NHL teams, quality of rosters. In simpler terms, teams are better because they have better players, not because they play a different system. They all play the same basic system, but the teams with the higher-end players score more because they have the goal scorers and thus can play a different style within that defensive system. Take Pittsburgh for example. The Penguins employ not one, but two of the leagues elite players who both reached above the 100 point mark during the regular season. And in Detroit, they had eight players above 50 points this season. And our Wild? Only Koivu and Brunette made it to 50, with Koivu netting 67 points and Brunette staying at 50. And offense is what fans love to point to when grading our Wild but peeking on the defensive side of the puck, the Wild were only better than Pittsburgh and Detroit by less than one-half a goal per game average. Now considering that league-wide there was a well over a goal against per game difference between the top and bottom, half a goal is not that great a difference. I don't know how more clear it could be but watch the two aforementioned teams play and you will see that they don't lack talent in the D zone. And what is most obvious is that both employ high-end offensive players...and that is the difference.

The only thing missing from that press conference the other day was not a hockey relate news maker but instead a hockey news deliverer. It seems that our press core was short-handed. Absent from press row was our Wild MVP writer and StarTribune employee Michael Russo, who is apparently on vacation. The whole event kind of reminded me of this past Wild season when our Wild team played the majority of its games without star forward Marian Gaborik. Funny, but during the teams biggest news-maker day since perhaps the day it originally introduced Lemaire as its first ever head coach, our star writer was not even in the room. It was obvious to me that he was not there, and I suspect that the 'trap' question may not have been asked had he been there. Kudos to Russo because he is the only media guy who has also spread the word that the trap is used league-wide, and is not something unique to our Wild in seasons past.