The edict from ownership called for tweaks. Paul Fenton came to the opinion, wisely, that the Wild roster required more than subtle changes.
Fenton hasn't initiated a complete teardown — yet — but his moves before and at Monday's trade deadline left no ambiguity about his feelings on the roster he inherited as general manager.
He's ready to start over. Significant changes were necessary.
Fans can debate whether Fenton got fleeced on different deals, but roster churn was the only way forward for a team that is stuck in a position of being good enough to make the playoffs but not good enough to win a championship.
"We had the oldest team in the National Hockey League," Fenton said. "And probably one of the teams that wasn't as fast as everybody."
Old and slow is a bad combination, something that minor tweaks wouldn't fix, which everyone knew when owner Craig Leipold laid out that vision.
Fenton's roster remake is predicated on breaking up a core that helped the Wild earn annual postseason appearances but had become stagnant in their development.
He jettisoned Nino Niederreiter and Charlie Coyle first. On Monday, Fenton traded Mikael Granlund to Nashville for 22-year-old Kevin Fiala. It won't be surprising if Fenton tries to move Jason Zucker this offseason as well.
There is an unmistakable youth movement under way, a calculated page turn to a team built around a younger core of Matt Dumba, Jordan Greenway, Joel Eriksson Ek, Luke Kunin, Ryan Donato, Fiala and — eventually, presumably — Russian prospect Kirill Kaprizov.