The Minnesota Wild are a bit of an enigma this season. They rocketed to the top of the NHL, then proceeded to collapse under the weight of injuries, roster confusion, and lack of cohesion. There are problems with the defense, both team and corps, and problems with being overly passive in every aspect of the game.

There are few places that this passiveness shows more than on the power play and in what coaches call "net presence." Net presence is generally a tough, hard to move guy willing to take a beating and have pucks bounced off of them. Picture Tomas Holmstrom, Ryan Smyth, Ryane Clowe. Guys with hard heads and big bodies.

Now picture the solution to all that ails the Wild: Nordy.

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Through a partnership with Wikileaks, we here at Hockey Wilderness, receive emails from reporters around the country with reports they have filed that their editors deem to be unfit for publication. Sometimes, it is a numbers game. A newspaper only has some many column inches to work with, TV news only has so much airtime and so on. Those stories normally fall by the way side, and are quickly forgotten.

Some become the stuff of legend after falling into the hands of conspiracy theorists or late night television on the History Channel. Regardless, some things are simply too difficult to believe without seeing them first hand.

Today, we bring you a report from the Associated Press that could rock the very foundations of Minnesota hockey. Some discoveries are simply too much for some readers, so we suggest that readers with squeemish stomachs and or those with heart conditions not proceed past the jump. Viewer discretion is advised.

With the warning issued, here is the latest article received from a terrified young reporter at the Associated Press.

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Thought we would pass along the latest email we just received from the Department of Player Safety at NHL HQ. As Mr. Shanahan states, we hope this helps to ease your concerns and allows you to move on through the season with fewer stress related illnesses.

National Hockey League
Department of Player Safety
1185 Avenue of the Americas, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10036

To: Minnesota Wild, and Minnesota Wild fans & Media

Subject: RE: Expediting Supplemental Discipline Matters Involving the Wild

Dear Mr. Leipold, Wild Players, fans, and Media:

In our ongoing efforts to make the supplemental discipline process easier and more transparent, we have decided to help you with your concerns regarding the lack of any supplemental discipline involving alleged dirty hits against the Minnesota Wild. To that end, we would like you to use the following form for announcing / writing about any further incidents regarding the Minnesota Wild. We hope this letter finds you well during the holiday season, and takes some of the burden off of your shoulders in the coming new year.

In Matter Regarding (Fill in opposing player name here)'s hit on (Fill in Wild Player name here), we at the Department of Player Safety have viewed the incident a great number of times from multiple angles, including (Circle two): On our sweet new Xbox Coli gave us / On our smart phone on the way to the latest Flyers - Rangers completely contrived and based only on marketing rivalry game / while listening to Gary Bettman complain about Sidney Crosby not being on the ice. While we feel that (Fill in opposing player name here) may have committed a rule violation, we feel strongly that he (Choose one) didn't mean to do it / didn't mean to injure / the play did not occur against a "cool" team / he was just playing with passion / we saw the same thing in a movie once and feel it was just funny.

Further, we feel that (fill in Wild player name) deserved to be punished for the truly vile tomahawk chop by Pierre-Marc Bouchard earlier this season and the fact that Cal Clutterbuck called us out for being unfair. In the future, please note that a ruling, once made, has absolutely no bearing on the decisions we make later in the year. The word precedent is difficult to spell, and often makes people think we are getting into Presidential politics, so we want to avoid that idea at all costs in order to not damage the image of the league.

While we can certainly understand the frustration of your ownership, management, media, and fans, the Department of Player Safety would like you to know that the NHL cares deeply for the safety of players east of Wisconsin and north of Virginia. If (fill in Wild player name here) wishes to appeal this decision, please have him contact the National Hockey League Players Association. The matter will quickly be swept under the proverbial rug as the PA wants no conflict with the league, and the appeal would go to Mr. Bettman who would never dream of overriding our decisions for fear we would actually do our jobs.

We trust this information will be useful in explaining to your players, media, and fans just why the NHL feels it is OK to act with reckless abandon, dangerous play, and intent to injure, just so long as that play is not directed at one of our marketable star players. If your fans or media have any further requests for information, please remind them that the Department of Player Safety, as an extension of the NHL, does not answer to them, and never will.

Please thank them for continuing to spend their hard earned money in support of our multibillion dollar organization, and recommend they continue to do so while watching their favorite players get injured with no recourse from the league.

Sincerely,

Brendan Shanahan
Vice President, Department of Player Safety

(For those not getting it, this is satire. Please do not, for a second think we actually received this from the league.)

Stick tap to Nate Wells for the inspiration.

We thought it best to keep Ol' Trusty locked away for a bit, let 'er cool down, work out some of the bugs. All of those Forsberg errors, the blue screens of Dater, the flat out struggles to make the thing work at all just frustrated Nathan to no end. With the amount of money he sunk into this thing, who can blame him?

However, after some intense negotiations with MBennett about the customer service agreement, we have the HWRG2000 operational and we are going to plug in some information about free agency and see what exactly the "improvements" Mr. Bennett supposedly made are.

If you are willing to help us test this thing out, make the jump for some free agency rumor mongering.

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After a long, heavily sedated slumber, the Hockey Wilderness Rumor Generator has been brought back online just in time for the 2011 NHL trade deadline. We had few juicy tidbits to work with, so we did what any respectable hockey rumor generation site would do. 

We made them up.

Remember, if you will, the blockbusters we have broken using the HWRG2000. We found out the Cam Barker is really Kobe Bryant. We over came blue screens of Dater and Forsberg errors to attempt to literally save the world. If that weren't enough for you, we also learned of a three way deal involving Mikko Koivu, Chris Stewart and Alexander Ovechkin... just in time to kill the deal.

You should all be absorbing as much of these as possible. Someday soon we may switch this all to a pay service and become filthy rich off of you suckers, our fine customers. We sincerely hope you enjoy Ol' Trusty's work this time around. It had plenty to work with after we completely made up entered all of the completely reliable information.

Make the jump, will you?

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After a couple of weeks of processing the information ourselves, the crew here at Hockey Wilderness decided to call Mr. Bennett back in to help us out. This confounded machine just does not like us, we figured. Turns out there was more to it than than. In a letter Bennett left on the machine (he would not let us in the room, dang recluse), this is what we learned:

This information has literally taken the HWRG2000 weeks to fact-check. There were blue screens of Dater, Forsberg errors, Flames and Oil spewing from the seams, and, if I didn't know better, I think the HWRG2000 got Mattias Ohlund'd due to the amount of time it took to recover. But never fear readers of the Wilderness, the HWRG2000 (aka Ol' Trusty), is back and better than ever. Here is the information. Remember...this info is F.Y.E.O! That is, of course, a reminder to keep these rumors quiet...written in the native tongue of 5th grade girls.

The amount of complicated subroutines, algorithms, and other math words that have to be accounted for inside the programming of this thing has got to be astronomical. Amazing piece of technological engineering, but what a  touchy little snot. The machine, not Bennett. Although, on second thought...

Anyone caught spreading these rumors will be shot. Of course, since this is a new, more friendly America, we simply mean shot with a camera. You know? Like the head shots the NHL thinks players are worried about. 

Make the jump. Learn something. Laugh a little. It'll be fun.

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This morning, when MBennett and I went in to the room to see why the HWRG2000 had not been sending out the rumors as we had hoped, we were floored. As we entered the room, there was a strong odor of Aqua Velva, and there were pieces of the Denver Post scattered about.

The only hint the HWRG2000 could give us was on the small screen that usually reports errors in inputs. For some reason it just kept flashing "Forsberg." It really was odd. If anyone has any clues as to who may have been tampering with the HWRG2000, please let us know.

This technology has already fallen prey to BizNasty and now to a seemingly random burglar bent on bringing back the glory days of a franchise in Colorado. We need a better lock, I think.

You can submit tips anonymously, or send in your "fact" based information to HWRumors(at)Hotmail(dot)com.

Make the jump for the latest batch processing results.

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Yesterday, we asked you to mail in your "fact" based tidbits of information. We will then feed this information into the Hockey Wilderness Rumor Generator 2000, a machine invented by the nefarious MBennett. After a few test runs, we feel the machine has been installed correctly, is fully functioning, and we have issued the final payment.

That's right, this machine is fully paid for. That means if it gets broken, Nathan has to fix it. Add to the list, boss. Right after your furnace and water heater.

What does the Rumor Generator 2000 have in store for you today? Make the jump and find out.

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