confirmed: Wild Fire GM Paul Fenton After One Year on the Job

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must've porked somebody's wife

seems like an odd time to do it. Like you gave him the ability to lead things during free agency, and then fired him afterwards?

 

ownership must really hate that Zuc contract

 

Really has to put a damper on training camp. Like, you're going to come in and they already fired the guy who put together this squad. they must have 0 confidence in them

Fenton's one year clinic on "How Not To Run An NHL Franchise" is over. Extending Eric Staal (when he's just about to go South, this time for good); Granlund, Neiderrider and Coyle shipped for used puck bags; big contract for 31 year old Zucc. So many dubious moves. No coherent plan. Parise and Spurgeon have voiced public discontent the past week, which neither, by nature, would be prone to do lightly. I have said repeatedly over the past month that this is the least promising of 31 NHL teams at the moment. Much of it is predecessor Chuck Fletcher's doing. I think owner Craig Leopold is a little impulsive. This move coming immediately after letting Fenton do the draft and sign Zucc is pretty "Wild." I don't envy the new GM trying a rebuild with the Suter, Parise, Staal, Zucc, and Koivu albatross contracts on the books. Maybe trade Zucc to Dallas with a little retention. We could file a grievance.

Fenton's one year clinic on "How Not To Run An NHL Franchise" is over. Extending Eric Staal (when he's just about to go South, this time for good); Granlund, Neiderrider and Coyle shipped for used puck bags; big contract for 31 year old Zucc. So many dubious moves. No coherent plan. Parise and Spurgeon have voiced public discontent the past week, which neither, by nature, would be prone to do lightly. I have said repeatedly over the past month that this is the least promising of 31 NHL teams at the moment. Much of it is predecessor Chuck Fletcher's doing. I think owner Craig Leopold is a little impulsive. This move coming immediately after letting Fenton do the draft and sign Zucc is pretty "Wild." I don't envy the new GM trying a rebuild with the Suter, Parise, Staal, Zucc, and Koivu albatross contracts on the books. Maybe trade Zucc to Dallas with a little retention. We could file a grievance.

 

makes too much sense but I still think he porked someone's wife

Fenton's one year clinic on "How Not To Run An NHL Franchise" is over. Extending Eric Staal (when he's just about to go South, this time for good); Granlund, Neiderrider and Coyle shipped for used puck bags; big contract for 31 year old Zucc. So many dubious moves. No coherent plan. Parise and Spurgeon have voiced public discontent the past week, which neither, by nature, would be prone to do lightly. I have said repeatedly over the past month that this is the least promising of 31 NHL teams at the moment. Much of it is predecessor Chuck Fletcher's doing. I think owner Craig Leopold is a little impulsive. This move coming immediately after letting Fenton do the draft and sign Zucc is pretty "Wild." I don't envy the new GM trying a rebuild with the Suter, Parise, Staal, Zucc, and Koivu albatross contracts on the books. Maybe trade Zucc to Dallas with a little retention. We could file a grievance.

 

They made the playoffs 3 years in a row and had 3 straight first round exits before missing this past season. They've clung on to that hope that maybe the team is good enough for too long. It was bound to come down at some point

 

Thing is, they have some good pieces you can work with. Suter and Dumba are very good defenseman. Koivu and Parise are very good potential top line quality forwards as well

 

why they traded Granlund straight up for Kevin Fiala is a mystery. Unless they decided to actually blow it all up and tank but even then, get some picks for him or something.

 

I don't mind the Coyle trade from their perspective. Donato is a good young prospect. But what didn't make sense was that was a trade of a rebuilding team, but their other moves don't seem like rebuilding moves. I just don't think the organization has had a direction for a long time.

seems like an odd time to do it. Like you gave him the ability to lead things during free agency, and then fired him afterwards?

 

ownership must really hate that Zuc contract

 

Really has to put a damper on training camp. Like, you're going to come in and they already fired the guy who put together this squad. they must have 0 confidence in them

 

I mean, the Wild are an aimless team who are only getting older, and his plan was... get even older?

 

According to Russo, Fenton turned down a trade of Parise — who is 35, always hurt, and has six years left on his deal — because it wasn't "good enough."

 

I'd have fired him the moment he thought giving Zuccarello six years was OK.

 

He also lost hard on Nino for Rask. I mean hard. That was probably one of the worst trades in the last five years. Just utterly lopsided.

I would’ve sacked him too if I owned that team.

A terrible run of moves.

Last season, in a five-week span, Fenton acquired Brad Hunt and Pontus Aberg, claimed Anthony Bitetto off waivers, and traded Nino Niederreiter, Charlie Coyle and Mikael Granlund. The returns for the latter were, respectively, Victor Rask, Ryan Donato and Kevin Fiala, and the Bitetto pickup a day after acquiring Hunt triggered a series of events that helped derail a team that was suddenly rolling at the time.

 

While the team has high hopes for Donato and Fiala, the Niederreiter trade stung as he went on to shine in Carolina, while Rask struggled to stay on the ice with the Wild. Entering this season, Rask’s likely going to be relegated to a fourth-line role with no special teams responsibility despite three years left on his contract at $4 million a season.

 

Fenton also nearly traded Jason Zucker at the trade deadline to the Calgary Flames on the same day he signed Eric Staal to a two-year extension rather than trading him to what sources said was the Boston Bruins. It also got out in June that Zucker would have been traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins had Phil Kessel waived his no-trade.

 

Beyond that, sources said there were numerous accounts of unhappy employees throughout the organization and countless other turbulent incidents that made their way into Leipold’s office. Sources said for weeks that it was becoming abundantly clear to Leipold that Fenton was not fitting into the culture that he and CEO Matt Majka had worked to create since Leipold purchased the team in 2008. Leipold also noted Tuesday that exit interviews with players added to the sense that something wasn’t right.

 

https://theathletic.com/1105764/2019/07/30/sources-paul-fenton-out-as-wild-gm-after-one-rocky-season/?redirected=1

 

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Niederreiter, Coyle, Granlund — all Ls.

Jason Zucker flapping in the wind — L

Zuccarello — L

Those Parise and Suter deals really just didn't work out. Sure, everything else he did wasn't great, but that team is built on two older guys that were not a good fit.

just brutal to lose granlund, niederreider, coyle, resign staal. wild hamstrung by no move clauses and a desire to shake up the locker room but just bad moves. this team now needs to bottom out and rebuild through the draft

Seems he was had leadership issues as well. It's a bit tough when you make Chiarelli level decisions and rub everyone the wrong way at the same time.

 

“It was the other portion of being a general manager — the organizational, the strategic, the management of people, the hiring and motivating of the departments,” Leipold said. “When I talk about not being a fit, that’s what I’m referring to.”

 

A lot has been made of Fenton’s much-maligned trades this past season, but when it came to the reason he lost his job out of the blue so late in the summertime, Leipold indicated it was because of the lack of qualities needed to be a good leader.

 

There was no final straw, Leipold said.

 

Instead, it was a slow bleed of “smaller issues just building up.”

 

Leipold acknowledged that he started to really wonder after the season if he made a dire mistake. Exit interviews with players gave a sense that “things weren’t all right.” Several staff members, from the hockey ops department to the locker room, have been unhappy with the way they’ve been treated for some time. Leipold hoped he could work with Fenton this summer to improve on some of his weaknesses heading into next season.

 

But when it became apparent to Leipold that nothing was changing, that players were still unhappy, that the morale of his front office and coaching staff and locker room staff was low, he decided it was necessary to admit error and pull the trigger before further damage could be done.

 

https://theathletic.com/1107006/2019/07/30/why-paul-fenton-was-fired-and-where-the-wild-could-turn-for-their-next-gm/