from Brian Murphy of the Pioneer Press,
"I see a Stanley Cup championship. My hope is that it happens soon," Leipold told the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, March 13. "It may not be this year. It may not be next year. But the beautiful thing is we have a window now that's not going to close in two or three years. We've got a window that's going to be opened up for five, six or seven years."
Leipold boasted during his speech about 102-percent-capacity sellouts at Xcel Energy Center for the Wild coming out of a damaging lockout, plus merchandise sales among the league's top five teams, thanks to interest piqued by last summer's signings of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.
But in an interview afterwards, the team's majority stakeholder checked any hubris from that $196 million free-agency investment at the doors of the St. Paul Hotel, acknowledging he was pleased with how the Wild have played in recent weeks but cautioning against planning any ticker-tape parades.
"You don't want to say this year's the year we're going to win the Stanley Cup since we haven't been to the playoffs in four years," Leipold said. "Let's take it a step at a time. I'm trying to just be realistic. Do we want to win it this year? I guess we do. Of course we do. But it's not something that's going to necessarily happen overnight. We've got these young guys coming up, and we think they're going to be a big part of winning the Stanley Cup."
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