Chuck Fletcher Q&A

When I covered the Turin Olympics, I watched Canada fail to win the gold, and listened to Wayne Gretzy spend what seemed like four hours dissecting the loss.

I learned then: Canadians can talk.

I spoke with Fletcher Thursday morning, long before his team played like dogs in a 5-2 loss to Vancouver on Thursday night (sorry, PETA, don't mean to demean dogs that way), and he graciously gave me very long answers that don't fit into many newspaper stories.

So, for Wild fans, here's a taste of what Chuck had to say, in full:

Q&A with Chuck Fletcher, Wild GM:

Is it an uncomfortable feeling for a first-year GM to take over a team and not be able to either immediately re-build, or immediately contend for a championship?

``Well, to be honest with you, it's what I expected when I took the job. I felt I had studied the team and had asked a lot of people a lot of questions, and I think I took the job with my eyes wide open. Certainly, there's a core of really good hockey players here, and we feel we can be competitive this year and next year and for the forseeable future, but there's no question in my mind that going forward we have to continue to find more young assets and find some more talented players through the draft, and continue to build the foundation of this team to be successful long-term.

``So there truly is a dispersal of talent throughout the league. So I think on a year-to-year basis you can see teams ascend rapidly and descend rapidly. We want to make sure we're building for the future through the draft, but we also want to make sure we can manage the cap properly so we can jump on opportunities when they come available for the short term.''

Q: Is it gut-wrenching for you and Todd Richards to start so slowly?

A: ``Yeah, you know, it is. We certainly didn't set out to start the season 5-9 and lose some of the hockey games that we did. Particularly on that first road trip that really got away from us. I think coming into this, both Todd and I recognized that there would be some growing pains early, and there would be a transitional phase where we were taking the team from one system into a different system and a different culture even.

``But I don't think you ever expect to be 5-9. From that aspect, it has been a bit disappointing, but the effort of the players has not been disappointing, and the buy-in of the older players has been particularly encouraging, and I truly feel we're just going to get better and better.

``This week, we've had three days of practice in a row for the first time since camp, and you can feel the energy of the group improving, the confidence of the group impnroving, and the execution of the group improving.

``But I never looked at this as a short-term project, and by that, if we were sitting here 9-5 right now or 5-9 right now I don't think there would be a sense of accomplishment or major disappointment, either way.

``I think it's where we're going to get to and we just want to keep getting better and play the way we feel we need to play and eventually I think good things will happen.

Q: Have you felt the need to pat Richards on the back, to reassure him?

A: ``I've tried to. Again, I think the Nashville game in particular was a really difficult game. It was a game where for the most part Nashville probably outplayed us for the most part, but we had a three or four minute spurt in the second period where the execution was terrific and we scored three goals and there was a tremendous amount of energy in the building, and then we just let it slip away and lost the game on a short-handed goal in the third period.

``That game seemed to really be a disappointing game. We didn't speak a lot that night, but the next day we got together and I just really appreciated his mindset the next day, which was, `OK, it was incredibly disappointing, but what can we do? What, realistically, does our team need to do to get better?

``So we were starting to get into a vicious circle, where the more we lost the harder it was to see straight.

``I thought Todd and his staff made some great decisions that day, some tactical decisions on what to do the next day in practice, and how to set up the video for the next game, and how to even set up this week's practices.

``So we seem to be going in the right direction now, and there seems to be a lot more life around the team.

``Todd is a rookie NHL head coach, but he does have a lot of experience in pro hockey. He's been on a lot of different teams and played for a lot of different coaches and worked for a few different organizations now, so he has a pretty good perspective on what's needed and I think one of his natural strengths is I think he has a real good feel for what people need and for how groups will react in different situations.

``He's a good communicator. We certainly we try to suport each other through these times, and the only thing I've tried to do is be around a lot.

``So i've tried to be positive and again, not in a gratuitous sense, but in the sense that this is more than a one-month project.''

After watching the Wild play on Thursday night, yes, I think Chuck has more than a one-month project on his hands.