What used to be commonly known as the State of Hockey has quickly devolved into the State of Chaos.



There is no other way to assess what transpired with the Minnesota Wild over the past year as one of the league’s most important franchises came untethered.



The mildly surprising hire of veteran NHL executive Paul Fenton just over a year ago as the team’s general manager was followed by a rash of questionable personnel moves, attempted moves and clashes with staff. And it ended shockingly Tuesday morning with Fenton being fired by owner Craig Leipold.



It is one of the shortest tenures of a full-time GM in recent NHL history and leaves the franchise trying to pick up the organizational pieces with training camp a little more than six weeks away.



Big picture, the bombshell of a move nudges the Wild into laughingstock territory, which is never a good neighborhood for a professional sports franchise to take up residence.



When the GM of...