The Minnesota Wild have already locked up most of the important pieces around the organization, extending John Hynes and his staff and adding a couple more years to Bill Guerin’s contract. But one major question still hangs over the season: Quinn Hughes.
Hughes is the name that changes the conversation. Without him, Minnesota is still a bubble team built around Kirill Kaprizov’s $17 million contract, with Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek and Brock Faber on team-friendly deals signed before the NHL’s cap spike. Even then, the roster still comes up short where it matters most: there’s no No. 1 center, there aren’t four dependable top-four defensemen beyond this year, and the penalty kill remains league-average despite expensive personnel.
That’s why the timing of Guerin’s extension feels so strange. Minnesota was always going to keep him after he won GM of the year last season and helped push the Wild to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2014-15.
Ownership has clearly wanted stability after Paul Fenton’s turbulent 14-month run. But stability has often come with a blind spot, where front-office decisions and on-ice results don’t quite line up.
The real issue is that Guerin’s next contract should have been tied to what happens with Hughes. If Hughes is re-signed, that’s one kind of future.
If he’s traded this year, that’s another. Minnesota should have waited until that path was clear before extending Guerin again.
If Hughes had re-signed, the Wild could have matched Guerin’s deal to Hughes’ extension and moved forward with a clearer blueprint. Instead, the roster still needs a No. 1 center for Kaprizov’s line and a replacement for Jared Spurgeon before the 36-year-old defenseman’s play slips further. The penalty kill also needs real work, even though Minnesota has already spent heavily on grinders like Marcus Foligno, Michael McCarron and Ryan Hartman, a middle-six swingman they’ve stretched into a No. 1 center.
There is a version of this where everything breaks right. Guerin could somehow land Dylan Larkin without giving up too much NHL talent, even though the Wild don’t have much draft capital to work with.
Daemon Hunt could develop into a second-pair defenseman. Hynes could fix the penalty kill.
In that best-case world, Minnesota becomes a real contender, takes the next step after the Colorado Avalanche routed them in the playoffs last year, and eventually convinces Jack Hughes to join his brother when his contract expires in four years.
That’s likely the future Minnesota had in mind when it extended Guerin this offseason. But it is not a future they should have treated as guaranteed.
Hughes could still enter next season on an expiring deal. If that happens, Guerin would have to trade him or risk negotiating with him when he reaches unrestricted free agency next offseason.
The problem for Minnesota is that Guerin’s recent track record hasn’t exactly screamed confidence. He traded for Calen Addison and David Jiricek, and neither move paid off.
The return for Addison was Adam Raska and a fifth-round pick; Raska played five games in Minnesota and had zero points. The Jiricek deal brought back Bobby Brink, who the Wild did not use in the playoffs and later signed to a one-year, sub-arbitration deal.
That kind of asset management has left Minnesota with a real opportunity cost. The Wild could have extended Kirill Kaprizov for eight years at $9 million on his first extension, which would have opened up $8 million in cap room. If they had not traded for Jiricek, they would also have had their 2025 first-round pick, third- and fourth-round picks, and a 2027 second-rounder to use in a deal for a No. 1 center.
Those assets could have been packaged with one young NHL player for Jack Hughes, whose $8 million salary would have fit neatly into Minnesota’s cap structure. They could also have been used to chase Dylan Larkin or a top-four defenseman already established in the NHL.
For now, Hughes may still re-sign. The article suggests he may be waiting for Guerin to offer a three-year, $20 million contract.
Cale Makar signed for a $20 million average annual salary, and that is what Hughes is worth per year. That makes the delay hard to explain.
Hughes has already said he was not worried about the new collective bargaining agreement, which cuts the maximum term from seven years to eight. He likely is not ready to commit long-term because Minnesota does not yet have all the pieces of a Stanley Cup team, and that should never have been viewed as a serious possibility. He probably wants proof the Wild can be more than a fringe contender before signing on for the long haul and trying to bring his brother over.
In that sense, he’s making the smart play. He has the leverage. Minnesota’s only real path to a championship this season would require putting Kaprizov and Boldy on the same line with a second-line center and hoping the defense and goaltending carry the rest.
That’s where Guerin’s lack of long-range planning comes into focus. During the cap-penalty years, when the Wild had no realistic shot to contend, he should have leaned into younger players and aimed for a No. 1 center and a long-term Spurgeon replacement. Better draft position could have brought cheaper bottom-six help, and more ice time for prospects might have unlocked more upside.
Instead, Guerin has consistently chased immediate results over a patient build. Minnesota has extended him every time his deal came up. They promoted him to team president in 2023 before the team had even won a playoff game, and now they’ve extended him before Hughes is signed.
The pattern is hard to miss. Minnesota has kept buying into Bill Guerin because of the name attached to the job, not the results on the ice.
He has operated the same way, leaning on instinct and ego instead of deliberate planning. That leaves the Wild stuck on the edge of contention, with no clear road to becoming one of the league’s best teams and a lot of hope riding on a roster that still does not quite look finished.
In Other News...
Wild Fans Just Got A New Reason To Worry About Watching Games
The Minnesota Wild are heading into the 2026-27 season with a fresh lineup of offseason roster changes and a road opener in Nashville on Oct. 1, but the bigger adjustment for fans may come off the ice. The club has rolled out Wild+, its new in-house TV and streaming network, which is set to carry most games exclusively and adds a different layer to how supporters will need to follow the team night to night.
There is at least one new carriage deal in place, with Spectrum cable announced as part of the launch, but the rollout still comes with real uncertainty for a wide swath of viewers. The NHL is still negotiating with other providers to get Wild+ distributed more broadly, and there are no agreements yet with Comcast Xfinity or DirecTV, leaving plenty of households waiting to see whether theyll have an easy way to watch the Wild this season. [Read more 🡒]
Wild Brought In Olli Maatta For A Problem They Still Must Fix
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Mtt has already sounded comfortable with the shorter training camp and has pointed to the value of defense and penalty killing as the kinds of details that can help steady this team. Minnesota is looking at him mostly as a defensive piece, not a scorer, which makes his fit fairly straightforward in theory. The real question is whether the Wild can turn that intent into a cleaner penalty kill and the kind of reliable structure they still need. [Read more 🡒]
Matt Boldy May Be On Verge Of A Much Bigger Wild Role
Matt Boldy is already past the point of being just another promising young piece for the Wild. After a career year with 42 goals and 85 points last season, he enters this year with the kind of momentum that tends to change how a team looks at its depth chart, especially for a player who has also raised his profile through international play and in the postseason. For Minnesota, the conversation around Boldy is no longer about potential alone, but about how much more responsibility he can handle.
The early signs point to a bigger role, with the Wild considering him for the second line and leaving the door open for shifts to the top unit alongside Kirill Kaprizov. Head coach John Hynes has already hinted that Boldy could see more opportunities as the season unfolds, which makes him one of the more interesting pieces to watch in camp and beyond. If that usage grows the way the organization seems to believe it can, Boldy may be on the verge of becoming much more than a strong scoring winger. [Read more 🡒]