Born to Be Wild!!!

The Wild have come a long way since GM Mckenzie took to the Helm, after being eliminated the 1st round in his first year in playoffs with no regulation loses and Crawford putting up some Stanlet Cup Winning goaltender numbers, GM Mckenzie did a little tinkering aquring big names like MArleau and Elliot to help push the team to the 2nd round in his second year.

"Alot of people Doubted this team this past season" GM Mckenzie said, they went on to defeat the Vancouver Canucks in the first round in 7 games and came within 1 game of being in the western finals. "We have a great core and great chemistry, but i felt like our depth was thin"

"We didnt get all the players we were targeting this offseason but we got some vetern depth we feel we needed to push our young guys" GM Mckenzie said.

So wirth the Moves currently taken place the wild will somewhat look like this, this following season:

Forwards:

Cammalleri / Marleau / Perron

Jokenin / Legwand / Havlat

Raymond / Gomez / Frolik (or Kopecky)

Pouliot / Fiddler (Nelson) / Kopecky (Frolik)

Bergenheim and Weise will most likley battle for the extra spot, with Weise as the favorite. They also added Cam Janssen but thats believed to be a minor move

Defence:

Weber / Beauchemin

Franson / Meszaros

Fraser / Pardy

With no AHL Dman ready to take the final 7th D spot, it will be interesting to see what GM Mckenzie will do to auire one via trade

Goaltenders:

Starter - Crawford

Backup - Ortio????

also with no solid Backup Goalie, you got to think that he will try to aquire one via Trade, but may end up letting ortio play to see if he can truly be a dependant back-up, after coming back over from the KHL we wonder is Ortio is ready to take on this role, some believe yes as crawford will take the most of the load.

All in all on paper the Wild have a decent team, Not the best No, but after coming one game from the western finals you got to believe they want to take that next step, as the next few weeks come along we will keep an eye on GM Mckenzie and the moves he makes to solidify his team.

Michael Russo - Minnesota StarTribune