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By Tom Schreier -
Bill Belichick was the New England Patriots head coach and de facto general manager from 2000 to 2023. During that time, he won six Super Bowls because of his ruthless approach to roster-building. “Better to let a player go a year too early,” he figured, “than a year too late.”
I don’t know if Bill Guerin knows Belichick or looks up to him as an executive. However, Guerin is from Worchester, Mass., 45 miles from where the Patriots play in Foxborough. Guerin was also playing for the Boston Bruins when the Pats hired Belichick in 2000. Odds are, he’s heard of the third-winningest coach in NFL history.
Hockey isn’t football, but most modern GMs adhere to Belichick’s philosophy. Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah cut Adam Thielen, who walked onto the team after playing at D2 Minnesota State, when Thielen demanded more money than he was willing to budget for him. Similarly, Twins president Derek Falvey has taken successful one-year fliers on players like Matt Wisler and Donovan Solano, only to move on from them the following season.
However, Guerin has implemented the opposite philosophy. Guerin inherited Ryan Hartman, a journeyman winger who scored 18 goals in his first two seasons with Minnesota. However, Guerin extended him for three years, $5.1 million in 2021. Hartman scored 34 goals in the first year of that extension, but it was an outlier season for the former first-rounder. Hartman’s previous career high was 19 goals with the Chicago Blackhawks in his first full NHL season.
Hartman only scored 15 goals in 59 games the following season, but Guerin awarded him with a three-year, $12 million contract last offseason. Hartman had 21 goals and 24 points last season, respectable totals for a depth wing. Still, most of his scoring has come when he’s centering the top line with Kirill Kaprizov. That sounds fine until you consider that means the Wild have a depth wing centering their top line.
While Kaprizov is elevating Hartman, Hartman is suppressing Kaprizov’s production. Winning teams pair bona fide centers with their skill players, and Kaprizov is better off playing with Joel Eriksson Ek or Marco Rossi on his line than a depth winger.
Overpaying a role player benefitting from a star player’s production is a cardinal sin for any front office, given that it leads to overpaying players and unnecessary budget crunch. However, it’s especially so for one that bought out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. Parise and Suter’s $7.3 million dead cap hits are the third-highest cap hits on the team, behind Kaprizov ($9 million) and Jared Spurgeon ($7.58 million) but ahead of Matt Boldy ($7 million) and Eriksson Ek ($5.25 million).
Instead of spending responsibly during the cap hell he created, which often means playing cost-controlled rookies with upside, Guerin has continued filling Minnesota’s roster with bad-value contracts. In addition to signing Hartman last offseason, Guerin also inked Marcus Foligno (four years, $16 million) and Mats Zuccarello (two years, $8.25 million) to extensions.
“I believe in these guys,” Guerin said after signing them. “I think they are how we get better here.”
Hartman, Foligno, and Zuccarello regressed, and so did the Wild. Minnesota had a franchise-record 113 points in 2021-22. Last year, they went from a 103-point team to finishing with 87 points and out of the playoffs. Hartman went from a 65-point player two years ago to a 45-point player last season. He also oscillated between being a glue guy and a goon. Similarly, Foligno, 32, went from playing 74 games two years ago to 65 in 2022-23 to 55 last year. He had 42 points in 2021-22 but has only produced 43 in the past two seasons combined.
Signing Zuccarello, 36, to a two-year extension is less risky despite his age. Still, most of his value was his chemistry with Kaprizov. Good GMs retain role players who bring out the best in their stars. However, Zuccarello no longer plays on Kaprizov’s line. The Wild gave each player no-move clauses, meaning they’ve locked themselves into a mediocre roster that blocks their best prospects when they would have been better off moving Hartman, Foligno, and Zuccarello at the deadline.
It’s not just Hartman, Foligno, and Hartman. The Wild signed Freddy Gaudreau to a five-year, $10.5 million contract after scoring 19 goals in 2022-23 and 14 goals the year before. He had five goals and 15 points last season. They’ve had a sordid love affair with Marcus Johansson and bought the dip on Zach Bogosian. He recently extended Jake Middleton, 28, for four years, $17.4 million a year before his previous contract ended.
Conversely, they played hardball in negotiations with Kaprizov and won’t sign Rossi long-term after a breakout season. Guerin kowtows to large, veteran players but didn’t sign Kaprizov to a full-length contract and may eventually push his second-best center out of town. As a result, Guerin has built a top-heavy team with middle-class bloat. He’s practically designed a team to exist on the playoff bubble in a market full of fans tired of first-round exits.
Belichick’s fatal flaw was mismanaging Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady late in his career. He spent years asking Brady to take pay cuts so he could build a team around him, only to fail to acquire enough good receivers. Belichick chose not to re-sign Brady at the end of the 2019 season, only to watch him win the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers a year later.
By failing to sign Kaprizov long-term, Guerin has mimicked Belichick’s worst trait while failing to adhere to his core philosophy. He has wantonly handed out long-term extensions with no-trade clauses to aging, declining veterans and negotiated aggressively with his best players. As a result, he only has two years to build a winner around Kaprizov before he’s stuck with a flawed team with no superstar.
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