The Wild entered Monday in the same playoff purgatory they’ve become accustomed to this season, among the Western Conference’s top eight teams but just barely.

There is time to fix that, they insist.

“We’re in a good position,” forward Marcus Foligno said. “We’ve got 30 games left.”

Maybe.

There are 30 games left for the Wild, starting with a 6 p.m. puck drop Tuesday in Buffalo, but only 11 before the Feb. 25 trade deadline for teams looking to add players for postseason play.

General manager Paul Fenton has been actively tweaking the roster he inherited from predecessor Chuck Fletcher in May, but he’s not yet convinced he should throw the entire weight of his office behind this team.

“We continue to talk about that,” Fenton said Monday. “I certainly think we’re a good enough to team to make the playoffs; hopefully we continue to play that way so that we’re adding and not subtracting.”

The Wild were guaranteed to start Tuesday in at least the eighth and final Western Conference playoff spot, but it’s a tenuous hold. While they were within two points of third place in the Central Division, they were within five of 13th in a 15-team conference.

Paul Fenton smiles as Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold, not seen, introduces hime as the team’s new general mangager during a news conference in St. Paul on Tuesday, May 22, 2018. Fenton, 58, will step in as the third general manager in franchise history, taking over for longtime general manager Chuck Fletcher, with whom Leipold cut ties last month. Fenton has served as the assistant general manager with the Nashville Predators since 2006. (Dane Mizutani / Pioneer Press)Since Jan. 16, Fenton has made six moves featuring a combined 12 players, most notably trading longtime Wild left wing Nino Niederreiter to Carolina for center Victor Rask. On Monday, the Wild assigned a couple of longtime NHL players to their American Hockey League team in Iowa after passing them through waivers.

“I think there’s a message being sent from management that we need to start performing better,” said veteran wing Matt Hendricks of Blaine.

That certainly seemed to be the case when Niederreiter, a first-round draft pick who had played 500 games for the Wild, was traded. At the time, Fenton said he was looking for a right-handed shot and liked Rask’s potential to rebound in Minnesota.

But he also told reporters, “When we make a change like this … it gives (players) an alert that if they want to be here, they’re going to have to play and play the way we want them to play and be successful.”

On Monday, the GM insisted he’s not speaking to his team through personnel moves. “I’m not sending a message,” he said. “I’m trying to make this team better.”

Players hear what they want to hear.

“Paul is engaged and doing his part to make sure he’s getting this team as ready as he feels it needs to be, and into a position it needs to be in,” wing Jason Zucker said. “Then at that point, it’s just up to the players to play hockey.”

On that front, the Wild have been wildly inconsistent, registering impressive victories against league leaders such as Winnipeg, Toronto and Columbus over the past month while losing to also-rans like Philadelphia and Anaheim, the latter of which ended a 12-game losing streak Jan. 17 at Xcel Energy Center.

The Wild also have not won more than three consecutive games since October, and returned from their mid-winter break last week to earn just one of four available points in losses at Dallas and against Chicago.

“It is frustrating, for sure,” Hendricks said. “There’s a kind sense of getting everyone on board every night. We seem to have 10, 12 guys on board each game, and five or six not on board. And it’s not always the same players, but we’re having everyone gel and come together.

“When we do have those nights, it’s obviously positive in the standings; we usually play a good game and come out successful.”

The few weeks before the trade deadline are always stressful for players, especially good ones with expiring contracts who could help a contender such as center Eric Staal, whom the Wild would need to make a legitimate run.

Asked if he believes management is all-in this season, longtime captain Mikko Koivu said, “Of course. We’re in the playoffs, so I don’t think that’s a fair question to ask.”

“I think we’re in a good spot and, for the most part, have been playing good for the last, I don’t know, 10 games,” Koivu added. “We’ve been beating all the good teams — on the road, even — and doing it at home. So, like I said, I don’t think that’s a fair question at this point.”

Fenton said he believes the team is giving its all – “For the most part,” he said, “I think they show up every single night looking to win” – and that roughly four months into his first season as GM, he knows what he has on his hands.

“I had an outsider’s look before and that hasn’t changed much,” Fenton said. “I’m looking to see how we can improve. Every move I make is to improve our team.”

It’s up to the players to prove that adding pieces will be worth it, and they probably don’t have 30 games to do it.

WILD MONTH >

Wild general manager Paul Fenton has been busily tweaking a roster he believes can make their seventh consecutive playoff appearance, adding and subtracting a combined 12 players since mid-January: