Offseason deals made to get Wild out of 'rut'

SAN JOSE, CALIF. - The Shark Tank is one of the NHL's loudest arenas, but the joint should be especially vibrant Thursday night.

The Wild and San Jose Sharks meet for the first time after they uniquely aligned to consummate three trades in a six-week period over the summer.

Brent Burns, a popular former Wild defenseman, and Devin Setoguchi, a popular former Sharks winger, will play against the franchises they grew up in for the first time.

Skilled forward Martin Havlat, unhappy in Minnesota and willing to waive his no-trade because of that, will face the Wild for the first time, while goal scorer Dany Heatley, blindsided by the late-evening July 3 trade, will try to show the Sharks that last season's unproductive Heatley wasn't the real Heatley.

The trades, which included first-round bust James Sheppard to the Sharks for a 2013 third-round pick, were executed for three very different reasons, at least from the Wild perspective.

• The Burns-and-a-second-rounder-for-Setoguchi swap on draft day came with prospect Charlie Coyle, now at Boston University, and a first-round pick that became Zack Phillips. That meant that in one day the Wild added the equivalent of four first-round picks as it took puck-moving defenseman Jonas Brodin with its own choice, 10th overall.

• The Heatley-for-Havlat swap was to give two 30-year-old All-Star, left-shot right wingers a change of scenery after it became apparent the current fits weren't right.

Wild General Manager Chuck Fletcher recently talked about how, and why, the trades came about.

Building blocks

The Wild had missed the playoffs for a third consecutive season -- a second under Fletcher's watch. He had fired Todd Richards, the first coach he took a gamble on, and was in the middle of a full evaluation of an organization in need of more bona fide prospects for the future and go-to guys for the present.

"We were stuck in a rut as a franchise," Fletcher said. "We wanted to take some time and really assess what went wrong last season, and even more importantly than what went wrong, 'Where exactly were we as a franchise?'

"By June, we were in a position where we felt comfortable internally where we needed to get to and what we wanted to try to accomplish."

• Fletcher on trading Burns: "The players you could readily move, he had by far the most value. People might find this strange, but the decision actually has no reflection of what we felt about Brent Burns. It was more a reflection on the status quo had to change and we had to aggressively add a lot of young assets. To get three top assets for one at this stage of our franchise's evolution was really important."

Admitted Fletcher: "As soon as you traded Brent Burns, you know you're one day closer to looking for the next Brent Burns. You're blowing a big hole in one area to hopefully fill multiple areas of weakness knowing you're going to have to go back and address that other area again."

Fletcher will closely monitor the development of Brodin, 18, skating in Sweden, and Marco Scandella, 21, who has been arguably the Wild's best defenseman during an 8-3-3 start.

Could Scandella be that budding No. 1 or 2 defenseman to replace Burns?

"When you look at Scandella's size, skating and skill, he has the talent to be a top defenseman in this league. It's going to be up to him," Fletcher said. "If he wants it badly enough, he has a chance to be a top guy. But we have to really look at this."

The Havlat-Heatley trade was complicated by Havlat's options after two years with the Wild.

"We envisioned Marty coming in and playing on a top line with Mikko [Koivu]. We envisioned him being a front-line guy for us, and the chemistry was never there. And I'm not blaming Marty at all for that. Just the fit was never there, and I don't know that he was ever completely comfortable here. And I don't think he was ever maybe put in the position where he wanted to be put in either. So that trade was just a recognition that we needed a different fit for our team, and San Jose felt the same thing."

At the draft combine in Toronto, Fletcher began talking to Havlat's agent, Allan Walsh, about Havlat's willingness to accept a trade for the right situation. Walsh gave Fletcher a couple of potential landing spots, and Fletcher began talking to those teams.

Fletcher came close on a couple of deals around the draft, he said, but the trade was eventually made after the Wild didn't find itself on Heatley's list of 10 teams to which he didn't want to be traded.

Ironically, trading Havlat was made easier by two things: 1) The acquisition of Setoguchi brought speed and goal-scoring prowess to the Wild; 2) Another of Walsh's clients, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, ideally would play the role Havlat had on the team.

• Fletcher on trading Sheppard, suspended all of last season for breaking his kneecap in an all-terrain-vehicle accident: "I talked to a lot of teams, and [Wilson] was looking for a big centerman. He asked about his health, and we were honest, saying we believe he'll be able to play this season, but we don't know. We added [Darroll] Powe, had [Kyle] Brodziak and young guys like [Cody] Almond, [Casey] Wellman and [Carson] McMillan and more kids coming in the next couple seasons.

"Personally, I felt it would be great for James to get a clean slate and move on."