Greetings from humid South Florida, where I returned today because of a family situation that has kept me out of town for much of May.
There literally has been nothing going on with the Wild though. I'm already ready for training camp, which begins Sept. 11.
Organizational meetings between the Wild front office, coaching staff and scouting staff begin next week, and that's when the direction of this offseason will become clearer.
But the last month has mostly been about decompressing. The next week will be about analysis. And starting the second week of June, GM Chuck Fletcher will begin going about his offseason business.
I have a few Wild items in Friday's newspaper, so check those stories out.
This week, Wild assistant GM Brent Flahr and his staff has been in Toronto for the draft combine since Sunday. Fletcher has arrived as well. All league GM's are there, so this is typically when the trade talks begin that often transpire around the draft.
In fact, if you remember at the combine in 2011, that is when I reported that the Cam Barker buyout was in the works and that is when the idea of Martin Havlat waiving his no-trade clause was first broached between Fletcher and agent Allan Walsh. It was also there when the Atlanta Thrashers staff was pretty much axed with the move to Winnipeg and when I wrote a few times that I kept spotting then-Columbus GM Scott Howson and GM Paul Holmgren meeting in the hotel restaurant. A few weeks later, the Blue Jackets acquired Jeff Carter on the eve of the draft in Minnesota.
So the combine is big for GM's as well as the scouts.
