I think that it is fairly well agreed upon that Lemaire’s system, as he has always taught it, does not produce champions, but, oh how it could be worse.

The wild have roughly 2.15 million in cap space available. Check this out for any questions cap wise. http://nhlnumbers.com/overview.php?team=MIN&season=0809

I agree that Skoula is not a physical player. But i will tell you what, I dare you to point to a D-man, this year, who has been more steady. A lot of Skoula hate carries over from years past, but I would say it is not deserved this year.

The Gabby situation, to me, is a no win situation. He currently has no value. So, do you move him for a 3rd round pick, or do you keep him until the deadline, and let some of his scoring win some games.

I also have to disagree on your point E. They are role players. They arent asked to score 20-30 goals. They are supposed to play their role. Shepp and gillies are still young, and they need to play to improve. But I am surprised to see you added Clutterbuck. This guy is 100% heart, 0% talent. But he is currently #5 in the league in hits. He is the aggitator the wild havent had.

Gotta love subjectivity, and nice to see new people throw their thoughts out there.

While I disagree with everything you’ve said (the only reason I disagree on #2 is because we really don’t have a lot of cap room considering where the cap will be next season, barring the Gaborik decision), I love the fact that you’re here saying it.

The only part that really doesn’t make sense to me is when you combine A and D. I don’t understand why the Fire Lemaire people would then want to trade Gaborik. You even say that Gaborik can’t succeed in Lemaire’s system. Well, if that’s the case, and if Lemaire is done, then Gaborik should flourish in an offensive system, correct?

I was going to disagree with you on Skoula, because his play has been much, much better this season, and I still think it has been better, and he’s been victim of his pairing. However, his goals against while on the ice in 5 on 5 situations per 60 minutes of time on ice is 2.60 vs. 1.83 for Nick Schultz.

I do think those stats are deceiving, considering that Schultz hasn’t looked that good this year and Skoula has looked much better than in years past. It seemed like every time he made a mistake in the past two seasons, it immediately went for an opposition goal, whereas this year, his partner is making errors leading to goals.

I’ll put together a post later this week breaking down some of the numbers on the team thus far.