Disappointed, Disillusioned

Where The Hell Have I Been?
You'd think a woman who is savoring her last full season with her favorite hockey team would be boring you all to tears with daily posts dripping with emotions and memories from the last ten years.  You'd think that, huh?   
Trust me, I'm very well aware of the fact that there are only 3 home games left which means that Vicki will now have to bring a whole box of Puffs for me (not the lotion kind, please) instead of one or two lone tissues.  Nor will we be making much eye contact going forward because that will bring on the waterworks for both of us and then we'll be worthless for singing anthem(s).  Dave, either intentionally or by divine intervention will not be with us for the last home game.  That's just as well since I am UGLY when I'm crying and he doesn't need to be scarred for life by having experienced that.  We'll say our hockey neighbor goodbyes on Saturday.  I'll say goodbye to Cheryl on Saturday as well - and she'll need to take my love and best wishes home to her mom.  Cheryl and her mother have been across the aisle (with her brother and husband) from me for the full 10 seasons the Wild have been playing.  The thing about the Wild, until this season, is that it's been one big happy hockey family sitting in the stands with a renewal percent in the high 90's.  

And that brings us to the Wild's current dilemma - nice segue, huh?  Three years straight of not making it to the playoffs, preceded by two seasons of really embarrassing early exits from the playoffs has left the season ticket holders a tad bit disgruntled.  Russo's been laying it all out there in his Strib columns and blog.  I appreciate his being unbiased about it, at the risk of being shunned by the team and the management. 

I will tell you that I am most disappointed in the players and their lack of everything the Wild's marketing team has been shoving down our throats for the last few years: Passion, Integrity, Dedication, Motivation, It's In Our Blood and my all time favorite (dripping with sarcasm here) Fight To The End.  There isn't a player on the team who can honestly look me or his team mates in the eye and say they've given 100% of any the aforementioned attributes night in and night out for an entire season in the last three years.  It has nothing to do with who's been coaching the team.  It has everything to do with the players.  Players who have come to realize that playing for the Wild means easy money for little to no effort in exchange.  Management and Coaching coddles them, afraid to piss off an agent or have bad press in the sacred State of Hockey.  These are players who, with the exception of maybe three of them, on any other team in the NHL, would be benched, sent down, traded, allowed to walk away in free agency or bought out.  

We've got a snivel monster of a captain when the fans and media harp on the obvious - team suckage.  We've got overpaid, non producing players who were supposed to be The Answer: Nystrom, Madden, Cullen, Havlat.  We've got other overpaid players who would be third and fourth line grinders on any other team: Bouchard, Miettinen, Kobasew, Barker.  Then we've got our version of 'premiere-future-of-this-team overpaid players: Backstrom, Koivu, Burns.  These guys would have found themselves in very different favor with their coaching staff on any other team this season.      

Before any of you start in on me about Todd Richards, let me assure you that he's not blameless and I am certainly no fan of his.  He's lost on the bench and can't even speak to any of the plays from the game unless he's had a chance to 'watch the tape'.  He's got one answer for everything wrong with the team: 'we need to address it and we will address it.'  He sends out the wrong lines and refuses to match his lines to the opposing team.  He doesn't know when to pull a goalie or when to bench a player.  Richards is in over his head and he's out of his league in the head coaching position here.  That fact sticks out like a flamingo in a snow storm but you have to admit he hasn't had much of a player effort to work with during his short time here.  He's lost the room, if he ever had it at all.  When that happens, there's nothing much to do except send him packing on April 11th. 

With all of the negativity surrounding this Year Ten franchise you'd think I'd be happy to be washing my hands of the 42 home game experience going forward.  You'd be dead wrong.  This is my team and for better or worse they're the team I'll be following for the rest of my life.  My reasons for this are multiple and many of them have nothing to do with the actual game of hockey but good or bad, the Wild is my team.  I can't begin to tell you how my heart aches knowing I won't be in the arena to see this team being rebuilt over the next few seasons.  And now, you'll have to excuse me while I find something else to do before the tears come and I'm wrecked for the next couple of hours.