Bill Guerin named Team USA’s GM

Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin has been announced as Team USA’s general manager for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics. He will be in charge of putting together a team comprised of American-born players — that will hopefully include NHL players — to compete for gold.

Initially set to be the assistant to Stan Bowman before he was ousted due to the cover-up of the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault in 2010, Guerin is entering in a position with an even brighter-than-usual spotlight upon him.

Bowman has dealt with the consequences of being in charge as a video coach sexual assaulted a player on his team, and then proceeded to cover it up for approximately a decade. Now, Guerin is thrust into that position with his own issue.

In 2019, according to a lawsuit, Guerin allegedly told a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins staff to keep quiet about the sexual assault the AHL head coach committed on his spouse while on a road trip. The head coach was promptly let go, the team citing personal reasons, and the victim’s family has also left the organization. Nothing has been determined yet, but the conversations are still ongoing whether the Wild GM had a major role to play in an attempt to cover up and not bring it to any further repercussions.

There will be more to come in the future, but right now it doesn’t look to good from an optics point of view.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told The Hockey News in October that based on the league’s research, they had no reason to believe that Guerin “neglected his reporting duties or failed to follow up appropriately on reported concerns.”