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By Tom Schreier -
Bill Guerin didn’t want to blame Dean Evason when he fired him after a seven-game losing streak during the Minnesota Wild’s 5-10-4 start in 2023.
"It had just gotten to that point where almost no matter what they did, the guys were having a hard time executing and generating offense," Guerin said. "Something had to change. 'We can't trade 23 players,' is the old saying."
Guerin can’t trade most of his players because he’s signed them to no-trade clauses. Even if he could trade his players, Evason wasn’t the problem; it’s the core that Guerin built. Unsurprisingly, not much has changed two years later. Guerin hired his buddy, John Hynes, to replace Evason, and Minnesota is off to a slow start again.
In 2023, the Wild went 3-5-2 in their first ten games. They’re off to an identical start this season. The players are trying to sell their players’ only meeting as the jolt the team needed. However, a 5-2 win over the shorthanded Vancouver Canucks shouldn’t convince anyone that they’ve turned things around.
The Wild are still out of the playoff picture, and their season remains very much in danger, which could lead Guerin to change coaches for the third time since taking over in 2019. Unless he can land Peter DeBoer, the only difference-making coach available, Guerin should install himself as the eighth coach in Minnesota’s 25-year history.
That might sound far-fetched. However, Guerin would be emulating his first general manager and mentor, Lou Lamoreillo, who repeatedly stepped behind the bench during his Hall of Fame run as the New Jersey Devils general manager.
Before this season, the New York Islanders announced that they would not renew Lamoriello’s contract, ending the 83-year-old’s run as the first octogenarian GM in the NHL. Before running the Islanders (2018 to 2025) and the Toronto Maple Leafs (2015 to 2018), Lamoriello served as New Jersey’s president and general manager from 1987 to 2015.
In April 1987, former Devils owner John McMullen named Lamoreillo as team president. Before the season started, Lamoreillo named himself as New Jersey’s GM, despite having never played, coached, or managed in the NHL.
Lamoreillo had played and coached at Providence College in Rhode Island and served as the Hockey East commissioner before McMullen hired him. However, Lamoreillo was virtually unknown outside of college hockey circles.
In 1989, Lamoreillo selected Guerin with the fifth overall pick. Guerin spent the first seven seasons of his 18-year career in New Jersey. Guerin won his first Stanley Cup with the Devils in 1995, but Lamoreillo traded him to the Edmonton Oilers in 1998 after a contract dispute the year before.
''I just feel fortunate to be a part of something special,'' Guerin said. ''I had a great time here. They were great to me and I don't regret one moment here.''
Lamoreillo spent most of his career as a general manager, but he stepped behind the bench three times. In 2005, he named himself head coach after Larry Robinson’s surprising resignation. Lamoreillo went 32-14-4 (68.0% points percentage) in the regular season and won a playoff series. Lamoreillo hired Claude Julien as his replacement a year later, but he fired Julien a year later and finished the 2006-07 season as New Jersey’s coach, winning another first-round series.
Perhaps most pertinently, Lamoreillo took over as New Jersey’s coach a third time after firing DeBoer seven years after dismissing Julien. In December 2014, Lamoreillo named Scott Stevens, Adam Oates, and himself as co-head coaches. The Devils were 12-18-7 when Lamoreillo dismissed DeBoer. They finished 32-36-14, 7th in the Metropolitan Division.
Most GMs have qualms about coaching their teams because they have to handle two tasks at once. However, Guerin can only make so many roster changes because he has handed out so many no-move clauses. While a big move at the deadline is still possible, now that the worst of the Zach Parise-Ryan Suter cap penalties are over, Guerin hasn't shown himself able to swing tectonic-shifting trades mid-season. Most of the improvement must come from internal development.
The Wild are what they are at this point. Guerin has always had the win-now temperament of a coach, to the detriment of his ability to build a roster as a GM. If he can’t turn this team into a winner, he only has himself to blame.
General managers tend to have a patient, big-picture approach to roster-building. Think Chuck Fletcher sticking with his Mikael Granlund, Charlie Coyle, and Jason Zucker core throughout early playoff exits, always pledging that his system works. It’s hard to think of a time, even in Minnesota’s most trying moments, where he lost his temper or publicly expressed a desire to trade core players.
Guerin has built a stronger core than Fletcher, even if it’s flawed. Still, he’s pushed to win with severe cap penalties that made building a contender near impossible. He’s theatrically threatened to trade players with no-move clauses and had tense exchanges with media and allegedly Wild staff behind the scenes.
Such a temperament from a GM typically leads to harried, shortsighted roster-building. However, it may be the kind of emotional coaching that jolts an underperforming roster. Guerin came up in the front office, not as a coaching. But Lamoriello had limited coaching and GM experience and excelled at both. Perhaps Guerin should try his hand behind the bench.
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