Wild Focusing on Playoff Run
Chuck Fletcher said his phone has been busy as Wednesday’s NHL trade deadline draws closer, but there’s no guarantee those conversations will result in any deals.“It’s hard to handicap,” the Wild general manager said.Coach Todd Richards seems fully aware of that.“Things could change,” he said, “but this is what we’ve got.”Unless the locker room changes, the Wild must hope what it currently has will be good enough to make a serious run at the playoffs.The Wild will return from the Olympic break with a game at Calgary on Wednesday. With 21 games remaining, the team is in 13th place in the Western Conference standings, trailing the eighth-place Flames by five points for a playoff spot.“I think the message is that it can be done,” Richards said Friday. “We’re five points out. There are still other teams that are in between. But we have to worry about ourselves and our own back yard. And it starts with the Calgary game. That’s a huge game and then we go to Edmonton. That game is going to be just as big even though they’re below us in the standings.“We have to win our games. We can’t worry about these other teams that we’re chasing or that we’re battling with or competing with. If we take care of our own business and we win our games, we’ll put ourselves in a position to get in the playoffs.”
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