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On the heels of two 100-point seasons, optimistic Wild are still playoff contenders Prove It by Michael Russo Russo's Rants P R E S E N T E D B Y any gigantic changes this past offseason. With Paul Fenton now running the show as the team's rookie general manager, many fans and reporters thought the Wild would make significant changes to their core with one or two earth-shat- tering trades. It never transpired because the longtime Nashville Predators assistant GM found his colleagues were trying to rob him blind. So instead, the Wild tried to get grittier by adding hard-nosed defenseman Greg Pateryn to the third pair and forwards Eric Fehr, J.T. Brown and Matt Hendricks to the fourth line. The fast Brown, a Rosemount native, won a national championship at UMD and the physical Hendricks is a former stud at Blaine High School and St. Cloud State. He also re-signed speedy left wing Jason Zucker, who had a South St. Paul native Alex Stalock looks to follow up on last year's strong season. O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8 | M H J ON L I N E . C O M 27 2018-19 MINNE SO TA WIL D SE A SON PRE V IE W Photos / Minnesota Wild/Bruce Kluckhohn, David Becker/NHLI via Getty Images, Minnesota Wild/Hannah Foslien, Joe Sargent/NHLI via Getty Images f you can't be optimistic in the first month of the season, when can you be optimistic? There has been a lot of skepticism about the Wild because they're coming off a year in which they lost in the first round for a third straight year, seem to be getting less and less competitive in the playoffs after advancing to the second round in 2014 and 2015 and didn't make I