This past summer the San Jose Sharks and the Minnesota Wild made three separate trades with each other.
The first trade happened at the NHL Draft where Wild GM Chuck Fletcher traded Brent Burns and a draft pick to San Jose for Devon Setoguchi, the rights to Charlie Coyle, and the Sharks 1st round pick.
Nine days later the teams made another deal with each other swapping Martin Havlat for Dany Heatley. A month later Minnesota sent James Sheppard to San Jose for a 3rd Round pick in the 2013 draft.
Tuesday night was the first meeting between the two clubs in Minnesota since the trades were made. With Havlat out of the lineup with a torn hamstring tendon and Sheppard watching from the Xcel Energy Center press box (a place he knows very well) the focus should have been on Burns making his return to the State of Hockey.
However the attention went to another player involved in the trade and not for the reasons he would have liked.
Devon Setoguchi was a healthy scratch for the game on Tuesday as the result of missing a team meeting. Now I have heard some rumors as to why he missed the meeting but I won't comment on them without verification.
What I do know is that it put Mike Yeo in a tough position. With the Wild having won only one game in their last twelve tries you need a scorer like Setoguchi on the ice.
However when team rules are broken you have to figure out how to discipline the person without losing the respect of the team.
Yeo made the decision to scratch Setoguchi from the lineup for one game and the Wild went on to win in a shootout 5-4, gaining an important two points in the Western Conference.
It was a bold move but the right decision by Yeo. Playing in the NHL is a privilege not a right. Each team has it's own set of rules and if players aren't going to follow the rules then they must be held accountable.
Now in all fairness to Setoguchi he does not have a history of doing things like this. I believe it was an honest mistake on his part and I'm guessing it won't happen again.
This move by Yeo should gain him more respect from the players in the Wild locker room, something the previous coach did not have.
Todd Richards:
Speaking of the previous Minnesota Wild coach, it was announced on Monday that the Columbus Blue Jackets fired head coach Scott Arniel and promoted Todd Richards to interim head coach for the remainder of the 2011-2012 season.
Columbus got off to a horrible start losing their first eight games of the season. They have been at the bottom of the standings the entire season and only a couple weeks ago GM Scott Howson said the Blue Jackets were pretty much playing for next season.
The firing of Arniel was something most people thought would have happened after a 9-2 loss to Philadelphia back on November 5th. Instead six other teams changed coaches before Columbus put Arniel out of his misery.
For Richards it's a chance at redemption after being fired by Minnesota at the end of last season. In two years with the Wild he was 77-71-16.
My thoughts on Richards as a head coach with Minnesota is there was a style of hockey he wanted his team to play but he didn't have the players that fit that style and he didn't know how to adapt with the players he had on his roster.
I'm also not sure how confident Richards was behind the bench. There were many times during his post game press conference that when he was asked a question he had a "deer in the headlights" look on his face.
A lot of teams in sports tend to take on the personality of their coach. That looked to be the case with the Wild the last season, a team good enough to contend for a playoff spot but in the end didn't know how to get the job done.
That being said Richards will have much better offensive personnel to work with in Columbus than he did in Minnesota. He'll have the chance to coach Rick Nash (The best player in the NHL nobody knows about) and Jeff Carter for the rest of the season. Minnesota had no one on their roster as talented offensively as those two players last season.
Right now I don't think Richards is a serious candidate for the Columbus job as the main goal for the Blue Jackets is to get to the end of the season.
But most coaches when they get a second chance in the NHL do things differently than the first time as head coach. I'm guessing Richards will be the same way. If the Blue Jackets are respectable for the rest of the season he'll be a candidate for the full time job next year.
Richards returns to Minnesota on February 11th as a head coach. A game that looked like a snoozer a few weeks ago all of a sudden is a little more intriguing.
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