Minnesota’s trade for David Jiricek looked like the kind of swing a contender takes when it thinks it can unlock a player’s upside. Instead, it has become one of those moves that keeps circling back on the Wild, first as a missed opportunity and now as a drag on everything else they’re trying to do.
Bill Guerin paid a steep price to get Jiricek from the Columbus Blue Jackets in November 2024: a 2025 first-round pick, third- and fourth-round picks in 2026, and a 2027 second-round pick. The hope was simple enough. Jiricek was the sixth overall pick in 2022, a 6-foot-4, 204-pound defenseman with a heavy right-handed shot, and Guerin believed a new setting could finally get him moving in the right direction.
“He moves well, he can move the puck, he’s got a good shot,” Guerin said. “Sometimes you’re just drafted to the wrong team.
As a young kid, you’re drafted sixth overall. We’re never going to pick that high.
We felt it was worth taking a chance on him, just needing a fresh start.”
The fresh start never really took. Jiricek’s time in Minnesota ended last March, when the Wild sent him to the Philadelphia Flyers for Bobby Brink.
In 31 games with Minnesota, he put up one goal, one assist and a plus-2 rating. The issues never disappeared, especially the inconsistency that showed up at the worst possible moments.
His skating remained a problem, and a lacerated spleen suffered while playing for the AHL’s Iowa Wild also cut into his development time.
The bigger problem for Minnesota was timing. The Wild may have been building around a young core when they made the trade, but that picture changed fast when Guerin went after Quinn Hughes last December. That deal sent Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren and a 2026 first-round pick to the Vancouver Canucks.
Once the Wild shifted into that kind of win-now mode, they no longer had the patience to wait on Jiricek’s game. The result was another trade, another reset, and another reminder that the original gamble had not paid off.
Brink has been on Minnesota’s third line and, as the source puts it, is doing everything but scoring. Jiricek, meanwhile, has had trouble holding onto a lineup spot and had been a healthy scratch for the previous five games entering Tuesday night’s matchup in Philadelphia.
What makes the deal sting beyond the player itself is what it cost Minnesota in roster-building flexibility. The draft capital tied up in the Jiricek trade is gone, and that matters now as the Wild try to patch together blue-line depth and work on another major move for Dylan Larkin from the Detroit Red Wings.
Columbus used the picks acquired in the trade on goalie Pyotr Andreyanov, center Alessandro Di Iorio and wing Tyus Sparks. Those names are not the point for Minnesota; the point is the assets themselves. The 2027 second-round pick still had value, and the other selections could have been used in a different way if the Wild had kept them.
That matters in a few places. Minnesota could have had more room to maneuver in the Hughes deal, perhaps replacing Ohgren with a player taken in the 2025 draft. Keeping Ohgren would have left the Wild with another forward option, either for this season after losing 150 points over the summer or as part of the package they are now offering for Larkin.
It could have changed the shape of the Larkin pursuit, too. If Minnesota had held onto that 2027 second-round pick, it might have been able to keep one of the two-to-three first-round picks rumored to be in the deal and still have enough left to make another move for depth.
The impact has also shown up on the blue line. The Wild did get Daemon Hunt back in the Jiricek trade, but the hope was that Jiricek himself would help stabilize a defense that has already been hit by injuries to Brock Faber and Jared Spurgeon in the opening months of the season.
None of this changes the basic truth that Guerin would not have made the trade if he had known how it would turn out. But with Minnesota still trying to pry Larkin loose, patch the defense and convince Hughes to sign an extension, the Jiricek deal keeps hanging over the roster.
It’s not just a bad trade in hindsight. It’s a trade that still limits what the Wild can do next.
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