TORONTO -- Two generations of Fletcher hockey men sat down next to each other for Monday’s Toronto Maple Leafs skate, with dad already ahead of the game after dinner the night before.

"My son paid," Cliff Fletcher said with a smile. "Well, the American dollar is worth a lot more here now. It was an inexpensive night for him."

Cliff, the Hockey Hall of Fame executive who remains a senior adviser with the Leafs, has a sparkle in his eye when asked about son Chuck, the Minnesota Wild's general manager.

"I’m very proud of him," Cliff told ESPN.com. "He’s been involved in hockey right from the time he was an early teenager. He was always around me in Calgary when we’d be talking about decisions that had to [be] made for the Flames back then."

Chuck Fletcher was a sponge as a kid hanging out with his father, who was GM of the 1989 Stanley Cup champion Calgary Flames team. He absorbed every piece of information he could. From a young age he had an idea he might want to follow in his famous father’s footsteps.

"I wasn’t a very good player so I knew if I wanted to stay in the business I had to try and follow in his footsteps or get a job in hockey," Chuck said with a smile. "I was a rink rat. I hung around and he was pretty good letting me sit next to him during games. I used to go to morning skates, too. I knew all the players, the trainers, the scouts, it was a great way to grow up. It was a great childhood."

Chuck Fletcher worked on the agent side for Don Meehan and Pat Morris at Newport Sports before getting his break on the NHL side when Bob Clarke hired him with the expansion Florida Panthers in 1993. Bryan Murray later replaced Clarke as Panthers GM but kept the young Fletcher on board. Chuck Fletcher then had assistant GM jobs with the Anaheim Ducks (2002-06) and Pittsburgh Penguins (2006-09) before getting his first GM job in Minnesota in May 2009.

Chuck Fletcher was a sponge as a kid hanging out with his father, who was GM of the 1989 Stanley Cup champion Flames team. Keith Beaty/Toronto Star/Getty Images

"Some pretty grounding there between Bob Clarke, Bryan Murray and Ray Shero," Cliff Fletcher said of his son’s former bosses.

But Cliff Fletcher’s influence on his son is obvious.

When the Wild were mired in their deep funk in early-to-mid January and people kept expecting head coach Mike Yeo to be fired, Chuck Fletcher didn’t go there. He believed firmly in Yeo. Besides, his father had never been a big believer in midseason coaching changes, something that always stuck with Chuck.

"Yes, he was never somebody that had any knee-jerk reactions to things," Chuck said. "You have to analyze your own situation and understand your players and your coach and the situation you’re in. To us clearly, we didn’t have a coaching issue. We were still defending well and had pretty good structure. We just weren’t getting a lot of saves at that time. One thing he taught me was just not to overreact to situations. Stay patient, analyze the situation."

Instead of making a coaching change, Chuck Fletcher traded for goalie Devan Dubnyk and the rest was history, as the Wild completely turned around their season.

"When you’re in charge, every team is different and every situation is different," observed Cliff Fletcher. "But if you know your players and you know your coach and you’re going through a bad spell, you have to have the confidence that in due course things will right themselves and you’ll get back on track. In 1986 in Calgary, when we went to the Stanley Cup finals, during Christmas and New Year’s we lost 10 in a row. We were fortunate to win the 11th game, a fluky goal in the third period. Then we lost two of the next 20. When you’re going through that losing streak, you’ve got to batten down the hatches and don’t do anything stupid. Just get through it."

Chuck Fletcher would have remembered that 1986 Flames team as a kid. Now his own NHL team may follow a similar script, from midseason slump to a long spring run.