Randomly called Kfan to win an invitation to this "event" tomorrow and what I gathered was is that our owner, GM and Lou Nanne will be doing an hour to hour and a half (?) interview / Q&A between 3:30 and 4:30
This will be aired so if you want to listen I believe it is during those time frames above and or can podcast later in the day. I am curious if they will let some in the crowd ask questions, and if that's the case. What do I ask. I feel like I want to hit Leipold with questions about the lockout and contracts after signing Parise and Suter but I don't know how to do this without sounding like a complete D-bag... Seeing as I love Fletcher, I may have to generate something for him.
Asking Leipold about his comments then signing the top two UFA's is amateur journalism. It sounds great if you don't understand the business of hockey (what a hypocrite!) but those contracts were the reality of the old CBA.
Parise and Suter were getting front loaded contracts one way or another. Good on Leipold and Fletcher for nabbing them both at a bit of a discount.
If you want to ask something interesting, ask Fletcher about the changes they made as an organization to improve scouting. They missed on first round picks from 2004-2009 and then from 2010-2011 they draft one of the strongest prospect cores in recent memory (Granlund, Brodin, Zucker, Larsson, Bulmer, Lucia, Phillips, etc).
^ has it, as i would love to hear the about the signing's it's preety straight foward.. all offers they got were front-loaded 10-13 years deals so no matter what they would have gotten that deal. Not to mention i don't believe Leipold had intentions to sign these guys believing he would get discount's on their contracts. I believe he would do it all over again, lockout or no lockout.
Asking Leipold about his comments then signing the top two UFA's is amateur journalism. It sounds great if you don't understand the business of hockey (what a hypocrite!) but those contracts were the reality of the old CBA.
Parise and Suter were getting front loaded contracts one way or another. Good on Leipold and Fletcher for nabbing them both at a bit of a discount.
If you want to ask something interesting, ask Fletcher about the changes they made as an organization to improve scouting. They missed on first round picks from 2004-2009 and then from 2010-2011 they draft one of the strongest prospect cores in recent memory (Granlund, Brodin, Zucker, Larsson, Bulmer, Lucia, Phillips, etc).
I would love to hear the answer to this question as well.
The answer may seem obvious, but I would also like to know Fletcher's take on what holes need to be filled before this team is a true contender.
Fletcher has a plan, and it would be fascinating to learn more of how he views the whole process of developing a team. In my opinion, he has shown himself to be quite competent.
I was sad when Fletcher wasn't there... personally that was 99% of my reasoning of going... even tho it was pretty cool
For those who didn't listen, you really didn't miss much. The only thing that I really took from it was Leipolds confidence in realignment and that it "will" be coming next year.
I asked Craig off air if we will be seeing future Aero's games, he said they have a plan in the works to have a couple games a year in MN from here on out. I was really hoping to hear that the Aero's will be moving to MN within 3 years but I knew that wasn't going to occur.
All in all it was pretty cool and intimate, I think there was only 20 other people there. Lou was awesome as always but was asked the same old questions.
I'll post the potcast when it comes up for those who couldn't listen in... I would say you could easily do without it, was the same old same old.
I honestly don't see Leipold as being hypocritical at all.
1) When he was talking about the teams losing revenue in the famous pre-lockout interview, yes, he was talking about the Wild (they were losing money), but he was also talking about the league in general (where some teams were losing a lot of money).
2) He signed Parise and Suter to the contracts THEY wanted. He didn't want those contracts. But he did what he had to get them. Who does want their owner to do what he did.
3) Lock-out wasn't about clawing back contracts already given no matter how much the players thought it was. It was always about future contracts. It only got to current contracts because Fehr caused half the season to go bye-bye, costing the league and players to lose a lot of revenues.
