Last Two Weeks, Quick Look at the Roster

Just a little over two weeks since the end of the season for the Minnesota Wild, and I've been a little depressed hockey-wise with no rooting interests in the Stanley Cup playoffs and the injuries that have been coming out of the woodworks since the beginning of the offseason have just made it worse.

Here's some bullet points of the the last two weeks since the season has ended and a look at the player situation right now for the Wild:

• Jacques Lemaire resigned from his position as head coach of the Minnesota Wild.
• Doug Risebrough's contract was "not renewed" by Craig Leipold, as the Wild will now have to search for a new GM and coach.
• Bad luck for players with last names beginning with 'B' in the organization as Bouchard, Brunette, Burns, Boogaard, Backstrom, and Bergeron are all currently injuried, along with Koivu, Schultz and Fritsche.
• Wild send 5 players to the IIHF WCs in Switzerland: Zidlicky (Cze), Miettinen (Fin), Harding (Can), Olvecky (Svk), and Madsen (Den).
• The search for a GM is on!

As for the Wild’s GM search, I hear Craig Leipold has more than 25 applicants, and he’s weeding out some names currently.

I also hear the interview process has begun, but I won’t start throwing names on unless I get it 100 percent confirmed that they’ve met. I am pretty sure one (Irish) bigwig that I’ve quoted in the past week was in town, but like I said, unless I find out that he was 100 percent in town to meet with the Wild, I’m not going to assume why he was here.

But you know things are getting down to the nitty gritty because suddenly candidates either don’t return calls or are hesitant to speak on the record. That typically means the process has reached a stage where everybody thinks they’ve got a chance for the job and don’t want to say anything to spoil their chances at it. ~Russo

Players under contract for the 09-10 season:

• Pierre-Marc Bouchard, C - concussion
  
• Mikko Koivu, C - knee
  
• Owen Nolan, R
• Andrew Brunette, L - knee
  
• Antti Miettinen, L
• Eric Belanger, C
• James Sheppard, C
• Colton Gillies, C
• Derek Boogaard, L - shoulder
  
• Cal Clutterbuck, R
• Craig Weller, R
• Kim Johnsson, D
• Brent Burns, D - concussion, shoulder
  
• Nick Schultz, D - concussion
  
• Marek Zidlicky, D
• John Scott, D
• Niklas Backstrom, G - hip

Restricted Free Agents:

• Benoit Pouliot, C
• Dan Fritsche, C - broken collarbone
• Peter Olvecky, L
• Danny Irmen, C
• Josh Harding, G

Unrestricted Free Agents:

• Marian Gaborik, L
• Stephane Veilleux, L
• Krys Kolanos, C
• Martin Skoula, D
• Marc-Andre Bergeron, D - back
  
• Kurtis Foster, D
• Tomas Mojzis, D
• Nolan Schaefer, G