He is driven to win. As soon as he stepped from behind the bench after the Wild's last game, he began to talk about next season. Others will do it. The players have great respect for him. If any of them have the ability to improve, Lemaire will see that they do.
Wild executives know full well they got stuck in an undesirable division.
All those games in western Canada make for lousy TV starting times. And it's difficult to imagine a rivalry building between Minnesota and, say, Vancouver. The word is that the league is waiting for one or both of the Alberta teams to move to the States. Then it will realign, with Minnesota being placed in a more geographically favorable division. But that's too high a price.