Wild going...WILD? Fletch Says 'Yes'!

Chuck Fletcher promises to make the Minnesota Wild a fast-paced team

2009-05-22, The Canadian Press

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The Minnesota Wild have never been a fast-paced team.

Chuck Fletcher plans to change that, and owner Craig Leipold is already using it as a recruiting pitch to prospective free agents.

Introduced Friday as the Wild's new general manager, Fletcher promised to bring the aggressive, physical style Pittsburgh has used to come within two wins of the Stanley Cup finals.

"Why back up and cede the ice to your opponent when you can force the issue up the ice? ... We want to dictate the pace of the play against our opponent," said Fletcher, who spent three seasons as assistant general manager with the Penguins.

Jacques Lemaire's defence-driven, discipline-demanding system helped the Wild outplay a lot of teams with superior talent, particularly during their 2003 run to the Western Conference finals.

However, following Lemaire's resignation and the firing of general manager Doug Risebrough, who shared his conservative philosophy, Leipold was eager to change the franchise's course at a time when restless fans and a slumped economy could challenge the Wild's eight-season sellout streak.

"I do believe that his type of game and the type of coaches that he's talking about bringing in is one that's going to really make fans happy," Leipold said.

The Twin Cities area is a hockey-savvy market with a rich tradition in the sport, but the Wild haven't been able to add any high-profile, buzz-creating players.

"Yes, I have been disappointed," Leipold said. "In the past I've been frustrated not knowing why those unrestricted free agents wouldn't choose this as their home.

"We have everything to offer here. I think the system might have been something that held them back. I believe Chuck feels that way. Other people that came through felt that way, so I think this is like the missing piece.

"They'll look at us in a different light now, and they'll want to come play here."

Maybe star forward Marian Gaborik can be persuaded to stay. He'll be on the market July 1 unless Fletcher can work some magic.

"It's not talk. This is the new style. I think it's probably what the Gaboriks of the world who are out there would be looking for, this kind of system that we put in here," Leipold said.

Fletcher cautioned that he won't commission a Euro-style, run-and-gun offence. Defence is still important, as is toughness on the puck and in the corners.

However, a fresh voice ought to help the Wild's chance of retaining their all-time leading scorer and original first-round draft pick. Risebrough acknowledged after his dismissal he had a rocky relationship with Gaborik's agent, Ron Salcer.

Fletcher's first task is bigger than Gaborik: hiring a head coach. The 42-year-old said he'll start interviewing candidates next week, hoping to decide before the draft on June 26.

It's clear Fletcher's choice will come from a different mold than Lemaire, who was widely respected but had trouble connecting with certain players and often expressed frustration with the way his teaching didn't consistently carry over to the ice.

The Penguins fired Michael Therrien in February and brought up Dan Bylsma from the minors to be their coach, a sign that Fletcher might prefer a younger, more innovative mind on the bench.

The son of a Hall of Fame general manager, Fletcher said this is the job he's wanted since age 8 - when he realized his skating skills weren't going to take him anywhere.

The Harvard grad has worked in the NHL for 16 years, including three teams, and learned all facets of front office work under a handful of renowned names in the game.

Leipold called Fletcher, the only one of 12 finalists and 32 candidates he brought to town for a second interview, "the total package."

The owner added: "I'm incredibly excited. I think he's going to be able to take this team to another level that maybe we didn't think we could get to."

A complete change of style.... Will be really interesting to see..

They had a short-list of 12? Oh, wow, are they federally funded or something?

They gotta keep Gabby if this is the direction they are going. He's all about speed and scoring. Only concerns are his health, and you do not want to overpay someone who is going to be injured constantly. It's a big risk. You also do not want to have to continue to pay a guy long term, expensive contracts when they are forced to retire due to injury problems.

Execs sing praises of Wild's new GM

Chuck Fletcher grew up the son of an NHL GM, learned his trade at an early age and now will get his chance to run the Wild.

MICHAEL RUSSO, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 22, 2009

After a far-and-wide search for a general manager to guide the Wild into a new era, owner Craig Leipold landed on a bright, young hockey mind who has been preparing for this job from the day he was born 41 years ago.

Being the son of longtime NHL executive Cliff Fletcher, Chuck Fletcher was given the rare fortune of a front-row seat while observing his dad run the Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs of yesteryear.

Then, from the moment he graduated from Harvard, he was entrenched in hockey.

After 16 years as a right-hand man inside three organizations, Chuck Fletcher finally has received the opportunity to run a team for himself.

Multiple league sources tell the Star Tribune that Fletcher, assistant GM of the Pittsburgh Penguins, has been hired as the Wild's second GM, replacing Doug Risebrough.

Coincidently, Fletcher grew up around Risebrough when he captained and later was assistant coach and assistant GM for his father's Flames.

A news conference to introduce Fletcher is scheduled for 4 p.m. today.

"I'm absolutely convinced he's the right guy for that job," Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke, who had Fletcher as his assistant GM in Anaheim, said during a telephone interview. "I don't mean to imply there weren't other worthy candidates, but he's ready for this.

"He's worked with teams who have played in the Stanley Cup Finals three different times [Florida, Anaheim and Pittsburgh]. He missed a Cup by a year with us in Anaheim, and his paws were all over that team. He's a good judge of talent. He's done all the components of the GM job. He's negotiated player contracts, he's looked after farm systems, he's worked on amateur and professional scouting. He's basically done every job in the portfolio of being a GM."

Leipold declined to comment, as did Fletcher, who will be leaving his job with the Penguins.

Learning on the job
Fletcher originally was hired by Bobby Clarke to be the expansion Florida Panthers' assistant GM in 1993. He was 25 and couldn't wait for the excitement the job entailed.

His first task once he got to South Florida? Buying a washer and dryer for the practice facility in Pompano Beach.

Fletcher has come a long way since. He spent nine years in Florida, playing a huge part in the expansion draft that landed such players as John Vanbiesbrouck, Scott Mellanby, Brian Skrudland, Tom Fitzgerald and Bill Lindsay -- core pieces to the Panthers' 1996 run to the Stanley Cup Finals.

While it's a team effort, Fletcher has played a role in key drafts that landed Ed Jovanovski, Rob Niedermayer, Rhett Warrener and Kristian Huselius in Florida, and Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Bobby Ryan in Anaheim.

He has worked alongside some of the NHL's top executives -- Clarke, Burke, Bill Torrey, Bryan Murray and Ray Shero.

"It's his time to be a GM," Murray, now Ottawa's GM, told the Star Tribune earlier this month. "He's an intelligent guy -- I used to say young guy, but he's getting up there now. The most important thing to being a GM is your people skills, and he's real classy in that regard and has earned the respect of the players because of his treatment of them."

Key decisions await
Fletcher will have two critical chores on his plate immediately -- hiring a coach and trying to re-sign Marian Gaborik with free agency fast approaching July 1.

Fletcher loves up-tempo, fast, physical hockey, and it's likely after seeing the job Dan Bylsma has done in Pittsburgh that he'll target a young, up-and-coming coach.

One immediate front-runner might be San Jose Sharks assistant Todd Richards, the former Gophers star. Richards is considered an up-and-comer and initially was hired by Fletcher to coach Wilkes-Barre of the American Hockey League.

As for Gaborik, it still will be very difficult to convince the star to stay, especially when he's this close to free agency. Plus, it'll be awfully difficult for the Wild to offer Gaborik a long-term deal, certainly not the 10-year, $78.5 million deal it offered him last fall.

It appears from the very early going that Leipold wanted Fletcher. The team interviewed assistant GM Tom Lynn, TSN and NBC analyst Pierre McGuire, longtime NHL executive and coach Pat Quinn, Anaheim assistant GM Dave McNab and Nashville executives Paul Fenton and Mike Santos.

Lynn declined to comment, but he's long had great respect for Fletcher, so it's believed he wants to continue in his role and work for Fletcher if the new GM is willing to retain him.

Ringing endorsement
"Wild fans will love Chuck," said Burke, who grew up in Edina and met Fletcher in 1989 when he was a summer intern for the Vancouver Canucks when Burke was assistant GM there. "He's a Minnesota type of person. Great talker, wants things done right, is a man of character and thinks people are entitled to explanations.

"I'm a Minnesota boy. I've got all those traits. We think people who ask for explanations are entitled to them, so I guarantee Chuck will be straight with the fans."

He sounds pretty cool actually. The Wild might get fun - and they have the goalie to do it for sure.

See thats where I've got some question marks surrounding this move... They've just re-uped Backstrom, but I'm not at all convinced that he'll be money in a run-and-gun system. He's been so well insulated by the "old" Minny system, that there's no telling whether he'll be as dependable without the same level of support.

Progress worth the risk with Chuck Fletcher

The Wild entrusted Chuck Fletcher to bring a proactive attitude to the franchise -- on and off the ice.

Michael Russo, 'WILD INSIDER'/Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 24 2009

It was June 2000, and Chuck Fletcher, introduced Friday as the Wild's new general manager, received one of his most painful learning experiences as a hockey executive.

The year before, the Florida Panthers were lauded for their blockbuster trade of Pavel Bure. As part of that seven-player swap, though, the Panthers sent a first-round pick Vancouver's direction.

Now, there's no denying the Russian Rocket performed magically in Florida, scoring 58 and 59 goals in back-to-back years. But in the 2000 playoffs, the Panthers were swept in the first round by the New Jersey Devils.

A few months later, the Panthers used their first draft pick to take a Siberian defenseman from a town once known as Tomsk-7 -- a triple-barbed-wired, military-protected, enclosed city because of the nuclear plants and radioactive missiles inside.

Fletcher was assistant GM of that team, and his lesson wasn't that Vladimir Sapozhnikov was an absolute bust.

It was that by the time the Panthers took their first pick at 58th overall, the Devils -- the team that had just swept them and won the Stanley Cup -- had taken four players.

Ever since, Fletcher has valued draft picks like gold. He feels they're the lifeblood of an organization, which likely forecasts the first big philosophy change Fletcher will bring to the Wild.

Fletcher will be stockpiling and using draft picks, while former GM Doug Risebrough gave them to valets as tips. That created two problems:

• It's such a crapshoot drafting 18-year-olds, the more draft picks teams possess, the better chance of hitting on players. This lack of quantity is one reason the Wild is devoid of blue-chip prospects.
• It created a shortage of assets in the system, meaning Risebrough's options were always limited when the time came to trade players.

For nine years, the Wild did things a certain way. It was conservative, defensive and stable.

Those aren't necessarily negative traits because they allowed the team to be competitive from Day 1. But they also allowed Risebrough to keep expectations to a controllable minimum.

His end-of-the-year news conference before being fired was Exhibit A. It would have been refreshing to hear him say it was unacceptable to miss the playoffs and time to re-evaluate everything. Instead, Risebrough talked about injuries and said Brent Burns and Pierre-Marc Bouchard had bad years.

Well, that's not good enough for Craig Leipold. And the owner made crystal clear Friday that the days of the Wild being satisfied by merely being competitive are over.

Leipold wants aggressiveness, creative thinking and risk-taking -- on and off the ice. And he believes Fletcher is the perfect guy to take the Wild to the next level.

One thing's for sure. Fletcher will at least try to swing for the fences.

First of all, he knows that's what Leipold wants, and he has been schooled by GMs who love taking chances -- Bryan Murray, Brian Burke, Ray Shero, and his father, Cliff Fletcher.

Risebrough just proved to be too gun-shy, a philosophy likely shaped in 1992 when, as the Calgary Flames' GM, he dealt Doug Gilmour to Toronto in one of the worst deals in NHL history. Coincidentally, the man who fleeced Risebrough was his Flames predecessor, Cliff Fletcher.

You can bet Cliff's son will jump feet-first into what is sure to be an active trade market this summer. Remember, many teams must dump salary in hopes of creating salary-cap flexibility, so Leipold had to find somebody not scared of maybe trading a Josh Harding or even a James Sheppard.

Leipold also needed somebody who doesn't have a hatred of the agent who represents the best scorer the Wild has ever known. That doesn't mean Fletcher definitely will be able to re-sign Marian Gaborik; it's still an incredible longshot this close to free agency.

But at least there will be a civilized conversation before July 1.

Most of all, Leipold wants to change the reputation of the Wild leaguewide.

The GM interview process confirmed a lot of Leipold's suspicions -- that educated hockey people believe players avoided the Wild because of its conservative philosophy off the ice and defensive style on the ice.

Fletcher loves fast, up-tempo, physical hockey. He's going to hire a coach who will dictate play rather than concede ice. In turn, it should create a more exciting product for fans and players.

Look, there are no guarantees. The Wild might have to take two steps back to take one forward.

But complacency can be a lot more damaging than change, and things in Minnesota had gotten real stale.

Leipold said it is time for the Wild to reach elite status, which should be music to everybody's ears. With all this market has to offer, from hockey tradition to a passionate fan base, there's no excuse for Minnesota not being one of the top destinations of anybody and everybody in the NHL.

It's what hockey-mad Minnesota craves and deserves, and Leipold has found the guy at least willing to try to deliver that.