In the history of this franchise, I cannot imagine there will be a worse public relations day than Feb. 26, 2008.

Quite frankly, it’s astonishing my email box hasn’t jammed and my blog hasn’t exploded. In fact, it did crash at one point apparently.

It got something like 80,000 page views today — a Strib record — and I’d venture the majority came after the Wild nabbed Chris Simon as its only trade deadline move.

And honestly, the emails are just flooding in with unbelievably disgruntled fans.

And my personal email account, I’m getting emails from friends I didn’t even know knew what a hockey puck was. You want to know why?

Chris Simon is that famous. He’s the player that landed the NHL on CNN and the Today Show and has his face on the NHL’s Most Wanted List.

Look, I don’t want to blast Simon. I barely know the guy. Quite frankly, he seemed like a nice enough fellow when he graciously answered my call at his house. And most the guys I’ve ever talked to that have played with him swear by the guy.

But the Wild might have been better off doing nothing.

The Wild may be bigger and stronger and tougher and yada, yada, yada.

But you know what? You have to make the playoffs for this anticipated physicality to matter.

– The Wild can’t score a goal anymore.

– And the Wild can’t shut down a third- and fourth-line anymore (see Brooks Laich, David Bolland and Kyle Brodziak. I mean some law firm-sounding line named Laich, Fleischmann & Fehr were plus-4’s tonight).

And the Wild can’t win a key draw — not anymore; they’ve never been able to do that in my three seasons here.

And the Wild is free-falling down the Western Conference standings.

Everything is a hindsight game in pro sports, but Wild brass will have lots of questions to answer if this team spins into oblivion.

And it’s really that simple. San Jose added Brian Campbell. Dallas added Brad Richards. Colorado added Adam Foote and Ruslan Salei and Peter Forsberg.

And the Wild — a team showing real signs of major, major problems — add Chris Simon.

I’m a realist. I’ve written hockey since 1995. I know things often look better on paper than they ultimately turn out to be.

And trust me, I certainly understand Doug Risebrough when he talks about his “activity junky” colleagues. And I understand why he’s frustrated with these stupid no-trade clauses. And I understand why in this new world, Risebrough can’t be tossing away first-round picks and young prospects.

And I know obviously I wasn’t on the other end of those calls today, so I don’t know for certain what talk he had, etc.

But Risebrough answered one of my questions about not addressing the center issue today by saying, “Check the trade deadline out and tell me how many centermen moved. Not many. So availability was limited.”

My contention would be that they were available … if you were willing to pay a price. There had to be something out there.

And you know what? Sometimes you have to be bold, especially when your team looks like a fragile mess and is on the verge of tripping into the bottom seven.

Sometimes you have to offer some significant help. And I can promise you, the smattering of players that were huddled in that hotel lobby this afternoon pre-game and rolling their eyes were not upset with the pregame meal.

To quote Jacques Lemaire after he goes on a rant, “Amen.”

Onto the game, it wasn’t pretty. Aaron Voros twice used his head as a punching bag. No spark came of it. What does that tell you?

Tomorrow night will be a tough one, too. Tampa should be rolling with four new guys looking to impress in their new digs. 

Good night. Talk to you from Tampa.

Two days from South Florida.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.