Wild general manager Bill Guerin not waving the white flag, long playoff odds and all

ST. PAUL — Just like thousands of Minnesota Wild fans, Bill Guerin battled traffic to get to Xcel Energy Center on time for their early evening game on MLK Day. If he was flustered by the sea of brake lights and the slippery streets he encountered on the way to the rink, he didn’t show it.

As he took his place behind a lectern across the hall from the Wild locker room and delivered a “state of the team” message to a dozen or so reporters, if Guerin was flustered by the team’s current on-ice messes, he didn’t show that either.

“There's a lot of hockey to be played,” Guerin said, when it was noted that 40 regular-season games remain. “So we're definitely not ready to wave the white flag or anything like that. We just want to get healthy and move forward and see what we can do.”

The harsh reality is Guerin is running a team that entered Monday’s game with the New York Islanders on a 1-7-1 streak, drifting further and further out of the Western Conference playoff picture. The website PlayoffStatus.com on Monday listed the Wild’s chances of getting the final wild card spot at 3%, and their odds of missing the playoffs at 95%.

Guerin already made a coaching change to spark the team, and it worked, for a time. The Wild were 11-3-0 in their first 14 games under John Hynes, then got stuck in their current rut. After Saturday’s 6-0 home loss to the Arizona Coyotes, there was a tide that seemed to turn among many in the fan base, who are of the feeling that a top-10 draft pick would be preferable to scratching and clawing for the eighth spot in the playoffs – especially when first-round exits have been all-too-common in the past decade.

Guerin, while seeming exasperated by all that has been thrown his team’s way this season, is not folding his cards just yet, and was more apt to look for sunshine beyond the dark clouds that have hung over downtown St. Paul. For example, injuries have limited team captain Jared Spurgeon to just 16 of the team’s first 43 games. But that has allowed Guerin to take a long look at what he got when a former Minnesota Gophers defenseman was included in the trade that sent Kevin Fiala to Los Angeles in the summer of 2022.

“It’s been an opportunity for us to see what Brock Faber is really all about, playing 25 to 30 minutes a night and playing on our first power play unit. I don’t think that ever would’ve happened if Spurg wasn’t hurt,” Guerin said. “I’d take (Spurgeon) healthy any day of the week, but, silver lining, we’re learning what Brock Faber’s all about. I think it’s good stuff.

The bad stuff has been two-fold: the injuries, and the on-going matter of the team’s salary budget, that includes $14 million tied up in the contracts of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise — two men whose replica sweaters are seen less and less these days as their time in Minnesota fades into memory, everywhere except on the team payroll. It will be the summer of 2025 before that dead money is finally buried, but Guerin is not one to wait 18 months to try and improve this team.

“I want to keep the expectations high. I would never walk into a locker room and say, ‘You know what guys? Let’s just bump it off two years and we’ll wait. You guys can just play and we’re going to do our thing as management while you guys just waste two years of your career.’ I don’t believe in that. I don’t think I could ever do that,” he said. “I expect this team to win every night. I expect us to compete for a playoff spot. And when we get into the playoffs, I expect us to compete to win the first round then the second round then the third and then keep going. That’s just my expectations.”

Guerin knows fans aren’t coming out in the cold just for the pregame light show and the music. The Wild turned in a decisive win on Monday, as Marc-Andre Fleury recorded his 552nd career win – second-most in NHL history. It was a very, very small step toward inclusion in the playoff discussion. But as the general manager learned while creeping along in pregame traffic, slow progress is still movement in the right direction.