Goodbye to the 2007-2008 season. It was a great season, Wild. See you next year.

Last night the Wild lost their Quarterfinal playoff series to Colorado.  This series loss seems to sting a little more than last year.  I think it's because I thought the team would beat Colorado in as many games as they beat the Wild.  Jose Theodore somehow had the Wild's number the entire series.  The Wild would have won a few of those games by about 5 goals if it weren't for him.

Plus there were all the injuries.  Who knows what might have been different if Branko, Parrish, and Schultz had all been healthy for the entire series.  Those are three solid players that played few very games throughout the series. 

Oh, what to do about it....  I don't know if the Wild should change a whole lot for next year.  I'd bank on their young talent getting better.  Koivu is going to become the Wild's most rock-solid player next year.  And look at the young talent like Burns, Bouchard, and Sheppard...  I'm eager to see what they do next year.  The Wild are still a young team emerging from expansion.  I think a lot of die hard fans out there are going to be pissed about this year, but for a team that has only existed for seven seasons, I'd say the future looks very, very bright. 

People will say that Gaborik didn't step up in the playoffs.  I'd say that Colorado just knew to focus on him and shut him down because the Wild don't have many other offensive weapons right now.  Colorado had three first-class scoring threats in Sakic, Forsberg, and Hejduk.  Minnesota had Gaborik.  Next year as Koivu and the other young talent develops I think that our own scoring threats will begin to increase.

But what else could the Wild management do to help push them further in the playoffs?  Again, I wouldn't mess with the core of the team too much, unless they try and pick up a top free agent.  That's exactly what Colorado did with Forsberg.  Who knows why Minnesota didn't get Forsberg (as per league rumors about MN's talks with him).  But that is the only large scale type of change I can see making a difference.  Here are some of the 2008 (unrestricted) free agents that might be available (thank you http://tinyurl.com/5j4rho):

Sakic, Fedorov, Sundin, Weight, Straka, Peca, Stu Barnes, Roenick

It's not like the Wild to go after big free agents like those names, but the Wild are beginning a different phase of their franchise.  Time to introduce some other talent?  They did it before with signing Pavol Demitra.  I don't know that it's a requirement to sign a free agent to push the Wild to the next level, but it would definitely help.