The longest post you will see here about the Wild

What a fancy logo. It's both a landscape and a cat's head!

Hey gang, Ryan here, much to your collective chagrin. I'm not sure why Kevin keeps tabbing me to pinch blog over here, but I'm going to be here tomorrow as well.

Anyways, I was going to put my Nick Bakay pants on and do some tail of the tape type post between the NHL and MLB trade deadline, but frankly, the Nick Bakay pants don't fit, and the post would have been boring. The difference is that there are a lot more trades during the NHL deadline. Similarities? Minnesota doesn't make any moves in either.

Hey! Minnesota! Since Kevin is always beating us over the head with Islanders crap (seriously, if I hear about Trent Hunter one more time...) (Second side bar, check out what islanders.com actually is. Hooray Polynesia!), let's rap about the Wild for a bit, eh? One question comes to mind. What the hell are they doing?

They knew going into the offseason that Pavol Demitra and Brian Rolston were likely gone, and indeed, they took off. Along with them Branko Radivojevic returned to Europe, and for good measure, they bought out Mark Parrish just yesterday. For a team that tends to struggle with things like "offense" already, it appeared that maintaining their high level next year was going to be a struggle. They had work to do.

They did some of that work. Here's a run down of the guys they acquired, either via trade or free agency:

Andrew Brunette - Old, was never much of a goal scorer. Replaces Rolston's 59 points with 59 of his own.

Owen Nolan - Just old.

Craig Weller - Punches people.

Marek Zidlicky - Plays defense, has a huge fan in the Czech Republic.

Mark-Andre Bergeron - Also plays defense. Popularity in the Czech Republic unknown.

Krys Kolanos - Sucks. Spells his name to reflect this.

Antti Miettinen - Finnish, adequately skilled offensively. Entirely unremarkable.

Not exactly an offensive breeding ground. Did Doug Risebrough want to go back to the days when the Wild would score 2 goals a week? Did he think they were more lovable then? To compound things, despite adding Zidlicky and Bergeron, the defense probably isn't that great, as Martin Skoula is out there pretty mch all the time.

Yes, the Wild are still young and those young players are likely to continue improving. The question becomes, if the Wild are this talented, why do they have to be so grueling to watch? I digress. At least we don't have to worry about whether or not we can get a good year out of Doug Weight.

(It should be noted that I'm not a Wild blogger, just a Minnesotan with a short attention span. For actual Wild bloggers, check out these lovely ladies, or perhaps this guy)