The mere mention of the Blackhawks is enough to get most Wild fans going. However the rivalry has been a bit less feisty the last few seasons as both teams have been largely out of the playoff picture.

Of course the big difference throughout is that the Hawks have won three Cups and been an absolute dynasty while the Wild had a six year playoff run that saw them get past the first round only twice and never beyond round two.

Chicago looked to be on the path to a high lottery pick when these two team last met back in mid-December, with the Hawks on a four game skid and just a couple points up on last place Los Angeles in the Western Conference standings.

Patrick Kane delivered the fireworks with a hattrick in the Blackhawks 5-3 victory that started them on a 19 game run that has seen them win 13 of those contests and climb to within 3 points of playoff position.

To make matters worse tonight is the fact that Chicago claimed Nick Seeler yesterday on waivers and he should make his Hawks debut tonight against his former mates.

The Wild on the other hand have been mired in 7-10-1 stretch of their own since that last meeting in Chicago after a very strong November and early December had put the team back into the playoff race themselves.

Now with just under three weeks to the trade deadline the Wild have far more questions than answers. Winning one or two and losing two or three is what this Wild team is. Bruce Boudreau has done a fairly impressive job consider what he has to work with, but at the end of the day this roster is not worthy of playoff contention and too veteran heavy with too much pride to sink to the depths of the standings.

So what does Bill Guerin do to get this turned around and in some sort of direction out of the purgatory that they have been in for seemingly forever?

The usual suspects are the names we continue to hear in trade talks, but to be honest it is going to take a lot more creativity to get this team out of it's current state.

Say what you want about Paul Fenton, but the fact is the deals that he made were not bad for the Wild and actually had the team heading into a different direction. Did he need to go? That is not up for debate as we all know the answer to that. However trading Nino Niederreiter, Charlie Coyle, and Mikael Granlund have turned out fairly well for the Wild.

Granlund is in the final year of his contract in Nashville, set to be a UFA on July 1st and having an extremely down season. Nino Niederreiter had a solid 2nd half last season for the Hurricanes but has not been able to come anywhere close to matching that perfomance this season even being a healthy scratch last week. Charlie Coyle has performed well for the Bruins producing at exactly the levels he did while here and he was signed to an extension by the Bs, something that was not going to happen here.

Bill Guerin, we know is a winner and it eats at him daily to see this team losing. However it is not his team with the exception of the seven year extension that he gave Jared Spurgeon prior to the season.

Guerin needs to make something happen to justify that signing. No one will argue the value and worth of Spurgeon, but seven years? Compounding a problem that has plagued the Wild with the Parise and Suter contracts, combined with the five year deal that Fenton inked Mats Zuccarello too last July, there is a lot of coin and term tied up to players on the wrong side of 30.

So trading Jason Zucker or Jonas Brodin is not necessarily going to solve what ails the Wild. That can only be solved by figuring out a way to get out from under some of the deals that have created this mess.

We too quickly dismiss this as it can't happen yet we have witnessed other organizations figure it out. Now it is time for Bill Guerin to work some magic both internally with his players getting them to step up and potentially waive the no movement clauses for an opportunity to win, and then get creative from there.

It's always Hockey Day in the State of Hockey!

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