Minnesota Wild GM and Head Coach Grant Farhall held a brief press conference after the team's dissapointing loss to the LA Kings. The loss has is the latest in the downward spiral of the team resulting in them being out of a playoff spot for the first time since October.
Farhall announced that the team's fortunes will be determined by the next 10 games:
"The fact is that our final stretch of games is difficult. Thus, this next 10 games is crucial as we feel there are a lot of winnable games. We NEED to be in playoff spot by the end of this stretch otherwise we will look to the long-term needs of this club at the expense of this season. All moves that we've made this season have been with only the short-term in mind. But if its not going to work then we will start building towards our long-term plans."
The specific stretch of games is as follows:
Feb. 12th - Oilers
Feb. 14 - Kings
Feb. 16 - Sharks
Feb. 17 - Bolts
Feb. 21 - Sharks
Feb. 22 - Devils
Feb. 24 - Kings
Feb. 25 - Rangers
Feb. 26 - Canucks
Feb. 27 - Devils
Farhall stated his specific goals for the stretch of games.
"Two things have to happen in this stretch:
1. We must be in a playoff spot by the end of the 10 game series
2. We must garner at least 12 of 20 points in this series of games. That's 6 wins out of 10.
If these things do not happen we will be looking to trade our veteran players. We will have two weeks at that point before the dealdine which is ample time to re-shape our team and organization for next season."
Farhall added that unless a golden deal came along he would not be making any deals during this two week stretch, stressing that he wanted to place the responsibilty on the current team to step up.
The Wild will have to meet the goals without #1 LW Steve Reinprecht who was injured in today's game.
Farhall did not take questions during the conference but did return to the podium to add one more comment.
"The Wild would like to add that we are not interested in Roman Chechmanek."
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