By Tony Abbott -
The Stanley Cup Playoffs started on Saturday, and for the second time in 12 years, the Minnesota Wild had already cleaned out their locker room. They had completed their exit interviews. The players gave their media debriefings and went their separate ways for the summer. Fans in the State of Hockey are now left to either adopt another NHL team, or perhaps the Minnesota Timberwolves, to vicariously glom their championship dreams onto.
It's a long, nearly six-month crawl to October when the Wild season starts again. In between, all eyes will be on Bill Guerin to see if he can get the organization on track for next year.
Every year in August, Dom Luszczyszyn of The Athletic conducts a series of fan votes to gauge fans' confidence in all 32 NHL front offices. These votes are elicited from local fans and outsider opinions about front offices. Coming off their best regular season in team history in 2022, Wild fans rated their local GM an average of 4.1 out of 5, the sixth-highest approval rating in the NHL from a team's fan base.
The local approval rating fell to 11th the following season, after another 100-point season followed by another first-round exit. In fairness, the actual rating bumped up to 4.2. However, multiple front offices surpassed that rating, including the ones in Vegas, Dallas, and Florida.
Coming off a season of missing the playoffs after hard-committing to his core of veterans (Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Foligno, and Ryan Hartman) in the preseason, it'll be interesting to see where that fan confidence winds up in August. A fan base that had been on board with Guerin's tenure is, at least anecdotally, showing the GM much more skepticism.
"It's disappointing, where we are," Guerin told the media in his end-of-season press conference. "Not making the playoffs is disappointing. This was basically a season of inconsistencies. There were some really good stretches. There was some real tough stretches. Our start was slow; we were behind the 8-Ball right away, and in this league, that’s unforgiving."
Left unsaid among the recounting of the rough season was a tumultuous start behind the scenes. An incident in November led long-time employee Andrew Heydt to file a complaint alleging verbal abuse from Guerin, which led to Heydt and the team severing ties.
The incident reportedly angered the locker room because players were close to Heydt. A second front-office investigation was born out of the first, leading to assistant GM Chris O'Hearn's dismissal. On top of these out-of-the-ordinary events, the Wild also dismissed Dean Evason and replaced him with John Hynes in late November.
The Wild had a lot go right for them since Kirill Kaprizov arrived in the 2020-21 season. They'd get out-of-nowhere performances from journeymen like Freddy Gaudreau and Jon Merrill. Mid-season trades like the ones for Jake Middleton or Marcus Johansson paid off with great runs.
There was some of the old magic at work in 2023-24. Zach Bogosian arrived in November and delivered 3.5 Standings Points Above Replacement to the Wild, the most in his career since his rookie season in 2007-08. Declan Chisholm went from the waiver wire to a mainstay on the Minnesota blue line.
But that magic largely ran out as the Wild rapidly became a one-line team. Jared Spurgeon's nearly season-long injury and small stretches of time with Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, and Jonas Brodin on the shelf added up. Minnesota went from 103 points in the standings to 87. An organization with a next-man-up mentality couldn't find enough depth players to step up this time.
Guerin fell on the knife in that regard.
"I have to look myself in the mirror and what I could have done better," he admitted. "I could have done a better job at insulating our team, insulating our top players, creating more depth within the organization. I think that’s something we fell short on."
Improving depth is a great goal to set out for, but the question is, How? The nearly $15 million in dead cap space tied up in the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts isn't going away, and that has forced them to trade away much of the depth that propelled them to success in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Furthermore, Guerin's roster can only change so much. The Wild have 20 players under contract who were in the NHL out of 23 spots for next year. While they can assign players like Vinni Lettieri, Marat Khusnutdinov, and Liam Ohgren to the AHL, their sub-$1 million salary won't free up much cap room.
Almost no one can free up cap room for Minnesota. Of their 13 players who make more than $2 million next season, eight of them carry some sort of trade protection. Three of the players who do not are Kaprizov, Boldy, and Joel Eriksson Ek, star-caliber players on value contracts. That leaves Filip Gustavsson ($3.75 million cap hit) and Middleton ($2.45 million) as the two easily movable players.
In the meantime, Minnesota has a projected $6.15 million to play with and a team that's largely coming back next year. Perhaps that's why Guerin was quick to praise his group despite the disappointment of missing the playoffs. "I will give this team credit: These players never quit," Guerin emphasized. "Until they heard they were mathematically eliminated… our team did not stop playing, and I respect that…. I was proud of that. They never stopped."
That sounds encouraging, except that it sort of contradicts what the players said during their exit interviews with the press.
"There was a little 'poor me' type vibe. It just felt like there was a sag," described Foligno, the alternate captain who inked his four-year extension in September.
"I've always said in years past how much I would have hated to play against us," said Hartman, a veteran whose grit-first mentality also earned him a preseason extension. "This year, I don't know if I could have said the same."
Guerin commented on these assessments, agreeing with the team's leadership. He noted that in the past, "We had swagger, we had confidence, we had a lot of ‘Eff You’ in our game… We didn’t have it this year. In my mind, to be a playoff team, to be a championship team, you need to have… that resiliency."
How do you get that back? Guerin suggested that a "reset" over the summer would be helpful. He also suggested that they could make moves in free agency and via trades. How realistic is a significant makeover? We'll see. But whether it's the team's skill level or on-ice demeanor, the Wild front office will have to figure it out or risk losing the fan base.
Those aren't the standards set by the fans, either. They come from the organization itself. When presented with the idea that Minnesota could bide its time and aim to truly compete when the bulk of its dead cap woes vanish next summer, Guerin dismissed it out of hand: "I don’t operate like that -- just wait it out."
We want to win now is the guiding direction for this franchise, regardless of what anyone on the outside thinks. It's a bold proclamation. For a time, it looked like Guerin could overcome the unique challenges he opted into with the buyouts. Those results earned goodwill from the State of Hockey. However, a year of disappointing results and backstage chaos might chip away at it. Guerin has to improve the team this summer, but these next months will be about more than that. He'll need to get the fans to buy back into the program.
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