Craig Leipold stood in front of the microphones and owned his mistake.



“I missed it, and this is on me,” the Wild owner said of whiffing so badly on last offseason’s hiring of now-fired Paul Fenton as general manager. “I don’t like the fact that it didn’t work out. Paul is a really strong, strategic scout, identifies talent, understands development, all of that, but there were parts of his role that just wasn’t working out to my satisfaction.”



Leipold, the original owner of the expansion Nashville Predators, knew Fenton from his days there as assistant GM. In fact, the first person Leipold interviewed last spring was Fenton, who was the immediate front-runner to replace Chuck Fletcher, in part because Leipold was so intrigued by his ability to identify talent.



“And he was tremendous at that,” said Leipold, who nevertheless fired Fenton “during a short conversation” Tuesday morning after...