The Wild Is to Hockey What Wild Wild West Was to Movies

America’s Wild West was renowned for big-dollar-driven gold prospectors, action-packed shootouts, and impressively fast draws to match. The Minnesota Wild of the NHL’s Western Conference is conversely known for its lack of big-name talent, boring style of play, and recently broken sell-out streak.

Needless to say, luck and a bunch of other things don’t seem to be on the Wild’s side this year. In a span of just 20 days, the following has happened:

1)     The aforementioned sell-out streak ended at 409 games.

2)     Supposed-number-one-center-of-the-future James Sheppard got put on the shelf for four months after an ATV accident, further off-roading his by-now inauspicious career path.

3)     Back-up goalie Josh Harding tore his ACL and MCL after Saint Louis Blues forward Brad Boyes collided with him, bringing new meaning to the saying: “Bad Boyes, Bad Boyes”. Apparently, all Harding is gonna do is likely miss the entire season.

4)     Leading goal-scorer Guillaume Latendresse confessed to the media that he could envision himself returning to the Montreal Canadiens later on his career, despite his having just signed a two-year, $5-million contract with the Wild. He added, as if to convince himself, that his head is really “in Minnesota”.

I’m sure it serves as little consolation to Wild fans that these events all took place in the pre-season, during which the games mean nothing.

In fact, the ended sell-out streak is proof positive of that and that the team’s fans have become fed up with a team that has regressed in recent years and has deemed it perfectly alright to dress an entire team of glorified third-liners, with the possible exception of captain Mikko Koivu, who was initially projected as one himself before he exceeded expectations and became a bona-fide star.

As for Martin Havlat, he still has to earn his six-year, $30-million deal, because the 54 points he notched last season are about as impressive as Sheppard’s uneventful career thus far. Despite being taken ninth overall in the 2006 draft, Sheppard’s looked more like a wide-eyed sheep caught in the headlights than a herder, or anything else coming close to resembling a hockey player. And I thought haggis was foul.

Meanwhile, back to the original point, it’s not as if his or Harding’s injuries will magically heal come the start of the season. Sure, Harding’s just the back-up and the team’s hopes still rest on the shoulders of Niklas Backstrom, but, even so, Harding was a potential number-one in the making who could have served as trade bait to any one of the countless teams bound to need help in the crease later on this season.

And then you have Latendresse, apparently so in love with his hometown that he seems to forget that that’s where he was booed incessantly for his lack of effort and eventually earned the nickname Fatendresse. Maybe Latendresse has turned over a new leaf and acknowledges he could have tried harder in years past. Maybe he realizes it could have been worse and fans could have substituted the “esse” in his name for “ass” as well. Hell, maybe he was just humouring the Montreal media as, it should be noted, he was just responding to a hypothetical question from a reporter asked during his team’s pre-season visit there.

Whatever the case, Latendresse has much more important things to worry about, starting with trying to justify his new contract. Chances are the overstated scoring binge he went on last year (25 goals in 55 games, while very good, doesn’t even amount to 40 over a whole season) was a fluke seeing as he had never scored more than 16 before. This newfound identity crisis should, at the very least, be put on the backburner along with his overinflated ego born out of all-too-quick comparisons to Guy Lafleur early in his career. As he should know firsthand, chants of the name “Guy” can easily change to ones of the word “guy”, as in “just a”, in a flash.

"Who's going to notice, here in Montreal?"

When all is said and done, Latendresse isn’t the only one suffering from a lack of a properly defined identity. At least when Jacques Lemaire was the team’s head coach, the Wild knew what they were: a hard-working team that didn’t have enough talent and had to play the trap to succeed. Now, under Todd Richards, they are a team that has even less talent that doesn’t know how to play the trap properly. They may still work hard, but so does a strip club’s B-list talent working the midday shift. At least the strippers have primetime to aspire to. For much of the Wild, this is as good as it’s going to get.

Additions Eric Nystrom, Matt Cullen, John Madden, and Brad Staubitz aren’t going to be able to check their way onto the scoresheet enough to make a difference. Ditto for Cal Clutterbuck who’s essentially a one-trick pony. It also remains to be seen if Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Brent Burns can put their concussion problems behind them.

The Wild are a mediocre team. In what will likely be a tough Western Conference once again, if the Detroit Red Wings, who annually find a way to contend for the conference championship, are the good, the Wild, who used to be able to win ugly, will just be bad... and miss the playoffs by a wide margin.