Under the old management the Wild would rather have a bunch of players with no ties to area with names you can't spell. I hope under the next general manager the Wild will look to college hockey to supply some of the talent for the home town team. I find it funny that the Wild roster over the past three to four seasons has been plastered with players from Finland, Slovakia and Quebec. There have been few former college hockey players and about what; four to five American players? The American players that I can remember are Mark Parish, Bryan Rolston, Keith Carney, Sean Hill? You do have to wonder that the hell Risebrough was thinking. It's not like they couldn't have seen these players play.
In fact, in the past three drafts, Minnesota has selected just one native son – center Chris Hickey of St. Paul, taken with the Wild’s final pick in 2006, 192nd overall. And the amount of Minnesotans on the roster right now? Zero.
Perhaps a GM change can reverse this trend, because otherwise the Wild is losing out on a natural advantage.
One name being floated around for Doug Risebrough’s old job is player agent Neil Sheehy, who grew up in International Falls, Minn., and boasts a client-roster heavy on NHLers from the Gopher State.
Now don’t expect Sheehy to bring Zach Parise, Kyle Okposo or Matt Niskanen along with him if he gets the job, but considering the young talent Sheehy has mined (add Jack Hillen, Chris Porter and Ryan Carter to that list, too) already, it’s not hard to see what top-end talent has been untapped as of yet by the Wild.
Case in point: the 2008 draft, where the Wild took Quebec-born defender Marco Scandella with the 55th selection. The next pick? Edina, Minn., speedster Danny Kristo, who played for Team USA in this year’s world juniors. If the Wild was drafting by position, they could have gone for Eastview High’s Corey Fienhage, who fell to Buffalo in the third round (81st overall) and was the exact same size (6-foot-2, 190 pounds) as Scandella when the two were selected.
In the first round, Minnesota was skunked by Anaheim when the Ducks took Minnetonka defenseman Jake Gardiner before the Wild had a shot, but it wouldn’t have been a stretch to go for Roseau blueliner Aaron Ness instead of Tyler Cuma of the Ottawa 67’s. Instead, Ness went to the Isles early in the second round.
Perhaps the Wild brass felt a little snakebitten when its 2004 first-rounder, A.J. Thelen, didn’t pan out. Drafted 12th overall and ahead of players such as Drew Stafford (Wisconsin born and a Sheehy client), Alexander Radulov and Travis Zajac, Thelen was a homegrown golden boy who crashed out, getting jettisoned from the Michigan State Spartans and eventually ending up unsigned by the Wild and playing in the ECHL. (Read the whole article here)
