My Jacques' back in Jersey

I am sure I am in the minority, but I liked what our former coach was doing and had accomplished with our Minnesota Wild. He was given the pieces, mostly grade 'B' at best, and put together a puzzle that was not always the most entertaining to look at, but competed on the ice and got some good results considering. And when it was announced on April 13 that he was 'stepping down', I could only wonder what life would have been like had our young franchise been guided by someone else, a coach who perhaps played that wide-open style that some fans seem to think exists outside of the Olympics...and the only conclusion I could come up with was that our team would not have had a winning season in it's eight-year existence.

Today former Wild head coach Jacques Lemaire was hired by the New Jersey Devils. It is great that he is back into the league again, and will 'no doubt' have his new team in the hunt at seasons end. He returns to the team where he instilled his 'system' that was so successful, today every NHL team plays it to some variation. In the 1994-95 season, Lemaire coached his Devils team to its first ever Stanley Cup Championship and also captured the franchises first two division titles during his 5-season stint there.

There will be no comparisons done by me regarding our new coaching regime versus the old. This is a new Minnesota Wild era, and fans should only look forward, not backwards. New Wild head coach Todd Richards will definitely have his hands full when things heat up this fall, but it would be unfair to thrust him into Lemaires' shadow. But there are a few in the minority, such as myself, who think that Jacques did what he could and played it smart with what he had to work with. One can only hope that our new coach is as smart when judging the talent he is given.