What are Bill Guerin's top-5 moves? Read about it here.
The Minnesota Wild have only had three general managers in their history before the hiring of Bill Guerin. Doug Risebrough was the Wild's first GM followed by Chuck Fletcher, who was the GM from 2009-2018.
After Fletcher was fired, the Wild hired Paul Fenton but his time as the GM only lasted 14 months when he was fired in late July of 2019. Wild Owner, Craig Leipold, announced 22 days later that Guerin would be the new GM.
When you look back on Guerin's four years with the Wild, it is impressive what he and his staff have been able to do in that short window.
In Fenton's one year as the Wild GM, Minnesota missed the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons. Guerin took over and in his first season with the Wild, not many moves happened, other than Jason Zucker's trade to Pittsburgh and Bruce Boudreau being fired during the season.
The Wild finished the 2019-20 season sixth in the Central division with a 35-27-7 record during the first Covid-shortened season and finished with Dean Evason as the interim head coach.
The following off-season was part of the big culture change that happened.
Part of what didn't work in Minnesota before was holding onto the core too long even when it proved to not work multiple seasons. Fenton helped break that up a bit when he traded Nino Niederreiter, Mikael Granlund, and Charlie Coyle.
Guerin finished it by trading Luke Kunin at the draft for Nick Bonino and one of the Wild's current top prospects, Marat Khusnutdinov.
He then dealt Devan Dubnyk in the off-season as well as letting Wild captain, Mikko Koivu test free agency.
The difference between the two GM's trading the core was Guerin got significantly better assets despite trading guys with not much value.
Guerin brought in Calen Addison, Alex Galchenyuk, a 2020 first-round pick (that turned into Carson Lambos), Bonino, and the 37th overall pick in 2020 (that turned into Khusnutdinov) for Zucker and Kunin.
While Fenton shipped out Niederreiter, Coyle, and Granlund for Victor Rask, Ryan Donato, and Kevin Fiala. None of which are with the Wild right now.
But the biggest culture change of all was buying out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter's contracts.
Parise and Suter were signed until 2025 and have been part of the Wild since 2013. The Wild made the playoffs in eight of nine seasons with Parise and Suter as the assistant captains.
In a matter of a year, Guerin changed the whole leadership core and head coach which completely changed the team's culture to what we know now.
During Guerin's four years as the Wild GM, Minnesota set a franchise record for most wins with 53 during the 2021-22 season and did it with $12.74 million being paid to Parise and Suter who weren't on the team.
Guerin didn't stop there, he traded young goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen to San Jose for Jacob Middleton who has fit very nicely for the Wild while Kahkonen has posted a 3.64 goals-against average, a .890 save percentage, and a 11-26-8 record in 48 games for the Sharks.
Not only is Middleton a good defender, but he is a character guy and a player everyone loves inside the locker room.
Guerin created a culture in Minnesota where players want to play for him and be a part of the team. One example would be Ryan Hartman, who signed an extremely team-friendly deal that only carries a $1.7 million cap hit.
Middleton also received a team-friendly three-year deal that only carries a cap hit of $2.45 million a year.
The moto in Minnesota during Guerin's time is making moves that also include guys wanting to be here. The drama of Cam Talbot against Marc-Andre Fleury led to one of Guerin's best moves. Trading Talbot for Filip Gustavsson.
There's no surprise that when you change the culture and fill it with younger guys and players who want to play for the Wild with zero drama, you play better and that is what Guerin has proven in his four years at the helm.
Obviously, the goal is to win the Stanley Cup, so seeing that the playoffs have ended with the same result every year is a little frustrating to fans regardless of the fact that the Wild are operating a cap hit that is paying over $10 million to two players who play against them.
That shouldn't be an excuse though, but once the buyouts return to a much more reasonable cap hit in 2025 of $1.6 million the Wild will have around $14 million in free cap space to make a deep run and get over the hump of not winning a first-round series since 2015.
Prospect Pool
Another thing Guerin has done exceptionally well was building the prospect pool. Wild fans remember the days when draft picks used to be traded and treated like candy.
It seemed like the Wild didn't have many first-round picks or picks in the first three rounds of the draft and if they did, the players that were drafted eventually got traded or never panned out.
However, since Guerin took over, he has accumulated six first-round picks and seven second-round picks in four drafts. That's 13 picks from the first two rounds of the draft.
From 2011-2019 the Wild had 13 picks in the first two rounds. That was eight years with 13 total picks in the first two rounds where it took Guerin four years to accumulate that amount.
He did it with the hiring of Judd Brackett to be their Director of Amateur Scouting. During that time the Wild have established themselves with one of the best prospect pools in the NHL and continue to add on with draft picks and trades.
Come 2025 the Wild will welcome their forward prospects - Liam Ohgren, Danila Yurov, and Khusnutdinov to possibly the NHL to play alongside Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Marco Rossi in the top-9.
In just a couple of years, the Wild may have the deadliest top-9 forward groups in the entire NHL with the majority of them being drafted by Guerin.
Fenton drafted Boldy and Fletcher drafted Kaprizov in the fifth round of the 2015 draft but it took three different GMs to get Kaprizov to come over to Minnesota from the KHL in Russia.
We will see what year five has in store for Guerin at the helm, regardless of what happens come playoff time if the Wild make it or not, fans should be excited for the future which has been something Guerin and his staff have been building towards for awhile.