from John Shipley of the Pioneer Press,

Once a feel-good, second chance for a great hockey market, Minnesota’s NHL team has settled into a maddening inadequacy. It would be easier if they were lousy, but the Wild keep chugging along at their B-minus pace, slightly and painfully above average — never good enough to win in the playoffs, never bad enough to rebuild through the draft.

And, of course, good enough to pack Xcel Energy Center, which has averaged above capacity since 2012.

But patience is growing thin, especially at the top, where frustrated owner Craig Leipold made the strange offseason move to hire new general manager Paul Fenton to tweak the roster his predecessor had been tweaking for years.

Fenton followed the Chuck Fletcher playbook by extending the contracts of another two young “core” players, Matt Dumba and Jason Zucker, and seasoning the broth with a handful of free-agent signings that failed to capture anyone’s imagination. If this team doesn’t deliver a real run, expect big changes, because an increasingly cynical fan base is already worn out, emotionally and financially.

Looking ahead to another 82 games of 3-2 wins, 3-1 losses and another short, first-round playoff loss is to contemplate the eternal pain of Sisyphus, forever pushing boulders up a hill only to start back at the bottom upon completion. It’s almost nauseating.

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