When it was all said and done, after Monday’s signings of free agents Mats Zuccarello and Ryan Hartman, Bruce Boudreau met with general manager Paul Fenton in an attempt to organize their thoughts and discuss next season’s lineup.



The Wild coach then hopped in his SUV, drove home and immediately pulled out a piece of paper after 20 minutes of thinking in his car.



“Who would play with whom?” Boudreau kept asking himself.



He jotted down some uniform numbers. He then crumpled up the paper, threw it in the garbage and began writing the same numbers again in a different set of combinations on the next sheet of paper.



And, so on and so on and so on this exercise went until the Wild coach stopped the complicated attempt that ended with so far no resolution in his mind.



The Athletic tried to do the same thing Sunday night on the eve of free agency.



“I’ve went through 20 lineups and all of the lineups...