Bill Guerin was riding high after being voted General Manager of the Year during the NHL Draft, but one offseason decision has quickly put him under a different kind of spotlight.
The Minnesota Wild’s summer hasn’t exactly been packed with headline-grabbing moves. Their biggest addition so far has been winger Blake Coleman and defenseman Olli Maata from the Calgary Flames, while Michael McCarron was retained well before free agency. For a team still trying to land a top-line center, it has been a relatively quiet offseason.
That’s why the departure of Mats Zuccarello is drawing so much attention.
The former Wild winger signed with the Los Angeles Kings on what looked like a one-year, $1 million deal, and The Athletic’s Harman Dayal included it among his nine best contracts from NHL free agency. Dayal praised Zuccarello as a player who still brings real value despite being 38, writing: "Zuccarello is 38 and there are some durability concerns, but he’s still a bona fide top-six player," writes Dayal.
"The undersized playmaking winger was nearly a point-per-game producer (54 points in 59 games) in 2025-26. He’s a very smart, crafty playmaker, and his three-game absence in the middle of Round 1 was also a reminder of how impactful he still is as a first-unit power-play weapon.
Minnesota’s power play was firing on all cylinders to start the series, fell off a cliff when Zuccarello got hurt, and then got back on track when he returned."
At the time, the contract looked almost too cheap to believe. The bonus structure wasn’t fully known then, but it is now clear that Zuccarello can earn a $5 million performance bonus after the 10-game mark, with another $500,000 in remaining bonuses tied to playoff victory incentives.
From Minnesota’s side, the move still reads like a clean break. Zuccarello’s chemistry with Kirill Kaprizov was obvious, and his playoff absence was felt.
But the Wild were working with limited cap space, and they are soon set to give Quinn Hughes a lucrative contract extension. Sportsnet NHL insider Elliotte Friedman also said a coach told him that Zuccarello wasn’t a positive on the power play because he was focused solely on getting the puck to Kaprizov.
So while the Kings may have landed one of the summer’s best bargains, the Wild and Guerin are the ones taking the heat right now. Zuccarello has moved on to another Western Conference playoff team, one that is entering its first season in a long time without captain Anze Kopitar.
Whether this ends up looking like a smart exit for Minnesota or a costly miss for Guerin won’t be clear until next season plays out. For now, the criticism is landing on the GM who just a few weeks ago was being celebrated as the best in the league.
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