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Chuck Fletcher to Wild veterans: It’s all your fault

Wild Richards Hockey

Minnesota Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher, left, talks to reporters about the release of Wild head coach Todd Richards at Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minn., Monday April 11, 2011. (AP Photo/The Star Tribune, Jerry Holt) ** ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS OUT. SOFT OUT MINNEAPOLIS-AREA TV NOT TV, MAGS OUT. **

AP

Things are awfully frustrating in Minnesota these days and Wild GM Chuck Fletcher is getting sick of seeing the losses pile up.

Fletcher got on his soap box and tore into the team he’s put together and is handing out some blame. Well, not some blame, a lot of it and he’s directing it towards the veteran players on the roster.

Ben Goessling of the St. Paul Pioneer Press gets the tirade from one angry man who says there’s “12 or 15 players not going hard.” Is a shake up on the horizon?

“If we can do something externally, great,” Fletcher said. “But we’ve got to be much better. And we have been much better. You don’t win 17 out of 20 games due to luck. Obviously, we’ve played well this year, and we’ve had success playing a certain way. So we know we can do it. The question is, how do we get back to doing it?”

One way to do it is to score more goals and the Wild have struggled at that especially with Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Guillaume Latendresse both out of the lineup with concussion-related issues. While Fletcher needs to add some scoring, guys like Dany Heatley, Devin Setoguchi, and Mikko Koivu could use a spark in their game.

The Wild need that spark soon because after a stretch that’s seen them go 2-9-3 they’re on the verge of being irrelevant in the Western playoff hunt.