Well, there goes the “young core.” It feels good, doesn’t it?

Enjoy it. Nay, bask in it. It’s cold out, the snow is up past the window boxes and the driveway has been blocked by the city trucks again. Let go, make a hot cup of cocoa and cozy up in the Minnesota Wild’s trade deadline moves as if they’re eider down wrapped in the duvet handmade by your grandmother.

The Wild have stopped hammering square pegs into round holes, and you no longer live in the State of Crazy Town.

Mikael Granlund, Charlie Coyle and Nino Niederreiter will likely do good things with their new teams, but they weren’t going to help the Wild win a Stanley Cup — so stop thinking about whether Kevin Fiala, Ryan Donato and Victor Rask will. For the time being, that’s beside the point.

Watching the same group of players run into the same wall in the postseason for six seasons was exhausting, and for the past few seasons completely unreasonable. It’s an overused trope that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results, but in this case it’s appropriate.

It took Wild fans three to four years to know that Chuck Fletcher’s “young core” was fatally flawed. It took successor Paul Fenton fewer than six months, his three big trades leading to Monday’s 2 p.m. deadline a tangible rejection of the status quo.

Fletcher was so loyal to his young players, acquired through drafts and trades, that he couldn’t see what everyone else around him could. That, for instance, none of his forwards had an above-average wrist shot. That none of the young guys — most notably big, strong Coyle and Nieddereiter — was interested in making a living at the crease.

When fans booed the team off the ice — three times in the past 10 days! — they were booing the result, the effort and the quality of play. There’s no doubt. But most of all they were booing the fact that they’ve filled Xcel Energy Center every night for six years to watch the same team do the same thing with no discernible progress.

Wild fans buy tickets and jerseys and hats and bumper stickers the way a dorm dietician buys peas and carrots, and all they got was this lousy T-shirt. Wild fans at least know the new guy — and by extension owner Craig Leipold — gets it. They are moving on with what might actually be vision.

Fenton has improved what seemed to be inoperable salary cap issues while acquiring real, young talent in Donato and Fiala, and kept the best of what was acquired by Fletcher: defenseman Matt Dumba, and forwards Jason Zucker, Jordan Greenway, Luke Kunin and Joel Eriksson Ek.

With the exception of Dumba, out with a shoulder injury since mid-December, they have been the Wild’s best players this month, particularly during a three-game winning streak the Wild take into Tuesday’s 7 p.m. puck drop at Winnipeg.

Not everyone will agree, of course. Hockey is tricky, and Niederreiter has been terrific in Carolina while Rask has been invisible or injured. But Donato has been invigorating, scoring four points in three games and winning Sunday’s overtime game against St. Louis with a shot Coyle probably never would have taken.

Those who have not given up on this season — the Wild are firmly in the hunt for a Western Conference wild-card spot — should be placated by the late announcement that veteran Eric Staal has signed a two-year extension, and that goaltender Devan Dubnyk remains.

Maybe it’s crazy to believe this is the roster that pushes the Wild deep into the postseason for the first time since 2003, but let’s be honest: It seems more likely now than it did two weeks ago.