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By Tony Abbott -
The New Car Smell is a real phenomenon. Everything's clean, everything smells like it's right out of the package. You try to keep it going as long as you can. Maybe you try to throw on a New Car Smell air freshener, but it offers diminishing returns. You might not dream of throwing that fast-food wrapper on the ground when the New Car Smell lingers. But once it fades? Anything goes. It's just another car now.
Bill Guerin his New Car Smell for a while. We can track the potency of the smell in The Athletic's Front Office Confidence Rankings from year to year. In 2021 and 2022, the first two years of the rankings, we can see that while the NHL world wasn't sold on the Minnesota Wild's vision, the local fanbase was thoroughly Bill-pilled.
But suddenly...
The New GM Smell can no longer be detected in Minnesota. The Wild fell 15 places in 2024's confidence rankings by the local fanbase. The Buffalo Sabres (from 12th to 27th), Seattle Kraken (from 13th to 28th), and Los Angeles Kings (16th to 32nd) are the only other franchises that saw this steep drop with their local fans.
The bottom fell out of the confidence level of the local fanbase. Even with the locals ranking 11th last season, 40% of the fan base were more confident in the direction of the franchise than they were the previous year. That's opposed to 7% of fans seeing a drop in their faith in the organization. This year, it's flipped entirely and then some. Only 6% of the fan base increased their confidence in Guerin, while 65% said confidence waned.
That's a minus-59 differential, which is a really big, really fast turnaround for Wild fans. While there might still be some diehards left on Billy Island, to most Wild fans, he's just another GM now.
What happened?
To answer that, we've got to take a look at the years past. What did Guerin excel at, and what did fans buy into the most? We can find out by stacking up the local fanbase ranking in each category, year by year:
It's curious how little of the day-to-day transactions factored into Minnesota fans' confidence in Guerin's front office. They never regarded Guerin as a top-notch trader, a free agent savant, or a crafty salary cap manager. The big things that hit home with the home crowd were the actual rosters, the work of Judd Brackett's scouting department, and the overall vision. We can see that bear out in the comments Wild fans submitted along with their votes.
From 2021: "The jury is out on how all of Guerin's moves will work out, but he does not seem shy about making tough decisions and sticking to his guns."
From 2022: "The future looks bright... once we get out cap hell." and "It's a completely different franchise [since Guerin took over]."
From 2023: "Love to see a front office with a focus on the future.... Excited to see this management start building toward a Cup window in a few years."
It was easy to see the bright future last summer when the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts reduced significantly, and Minnesota finally seemed to have free reign in their cap space. However, Guerin's moves in the last 12 months have hampered that future of wide-open possibilities.
Long, expensive extensions to Ryan Hartman, Marcus Foligno, and Jake Middleton tie up $4 million-plus in each player for at least the next three seasons. Yakov Trenin signed a four-year pact with Minnesota, adding another $3.5 million to the Wild's salary cap commitments.
Suddenly, the Wild are poised only to have $15.05 million in cap space (more if the salary cap rises from $88 million) in 2025-26. That's not terrible, but it does leave less than $2 million each for the eight roster spots they'll need to fill. And their pending mega-contract for Kirill Kaprizov, which would kick in to start the 2026-27 season, will also eat into their future cap room.
That foreclosing of the future is reflected in the biggest drop for any aspect of the Wild's front office: Their Vision. Minnesota's fans were among the 10, and sometimes five, in the NHL in terms of buying into their team's future. Now, they're flirting with the bottom five.
Forget the future, too. The Wild's extensions have made them too strapped to even buy low on goal-scorer Patrik Laine, even if the Columbus Blue Jackets eat half of his cap hit. Of course, some of this has to do with the last year of cap hell. Still, spending $4 million on Mats Zuccarello, Hartman, Foligno, $3.5 million on Trenin, and another $2.5 million on a nearly 40-year-old Marc-Andre Fleury feels like an unforced error that will cost them Laine.
What's the plan? For a long time, Wild fans thought they knew it: Ride out the storm of cap hell and use their young talent and cap flexibility to be aggressive heading into next summer. That young talent is still there. However, with so little room to add to this core going forward, the team is relying almost entirely on Brackett's prospect pool to get them to a top-level team. It can work, but the margin for error is slim.
Once a GM loses the fan base, the clock officially starts ticking. Guerin's grace period lasted a while; fans gave him about five years of rope. Now, we're going to have to see results on the ice before the fans have their confidence restored in the team's front office.
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