Now in his fifth season as the Minnesota Wild’s general manager, Bill Guerin is a two-time Stanley Cup winner as a player and had a two-decade career on the ice with eight different teams. Since retirement, he has become a front-office fixture, first with Pittsburgh and then starting in the summer of 2019 as the Wild’s fourth general manager.
In addition to his duties running the NHL team, Guerin took on the added responsibility of picking Team USA for the upcoming 4 Nations tournament, which will be played Feb. 12-20 in Boston and Montreal.
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During the 2024-25 season, he has dealt with the salary cap issues that have been a fact of life for the Wild since he took the GM job, and has navigated a notable string of injuries that have meant missed weeks and even months for a half-dozen key players. Between periods of a recent home game, Guerin sat down with the St. Paul Pioneer Press for an exclusive talk about the challenges of his high risk, high reward occupation.
What made you want to take on the Team USA job?
Why wouldn’t you want to do it? That’s a dream come true. I mean, yeah, it’s extra work, but it’s a pretty unbelievable honor to have the position. And you know what? I love the work. I’m getting to work with some really special people, too. So, it’s great. I don’t mind it.
Many of us in Minnesota met you for the first time in 2005 when you played for Team USA here in the World Cup. USA Hockey has always been a big part of your life.
It means a lot to me. I was 9 years old when the Miracle (on Ice) happened and then I was able to play for Team USA and it’s always been really important to me. I think the more people that we have that played, and that are committed to it and help and want to get involved, the better. There are so many bright guys out there in the league, like (assistant general manager) Jeff Kealty in Nashville. He’s running the World Championships here. (Florida assistant general manager) Brett Peterson did last year. These guys are really smart, they’re involved. It’s really good. I think it’s really important and, you know, we’ve got a good thing going on.
You played with emotion and we see your emotion come out sometimes now, like when we talk about the hit that injured Jared Spurgeon and things like that. Do you have to change your personality to be a GM, to keep more of an even keel, and is that something you had to learn in this job?
I keep my emotions in check for the most part. That’s the one thing that that gets me is when my players are hurt on stupid plays like that. Other than that, I can deal with the ups and downs, but I don’t think you should change. I tried that once and it didn’t work. I wasn’t myself and I didn’t like it, and I said, ‘(Screw) this, I’m going back to being myself.’ And that’s it. I won’t change for anybody.
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With the number of injuries, have you had to kind of keep an even keel and be patient this season?
When (injuries) happen, I get pretty upset. I get pretty emotional and angry, but you know what? That goes away. It’s one of those things where you have to sleep on it, and that dissipates and then you’ve gotta get to business and you’ve got a problem to solve. So, you don’t really have a lot of time to be mad. You have to figure it out.
When we talked to Wild owner Craig Leipold in the preseason, a lot of the conversation was about how ‘Next year we’re gonna have this cap space, next year we’re gonna be able to do things.’ Has this season been a pleasant surprise with how well the team has played considering all the other factors that have gone into this year?
This is what I expected. I expect us to be good. I don’t expect this to be a bad team. We’re not. We’re good, despite everybody bringing up the cap hits. It hasn’t made a hill of beans difference for us. It’ll be nice to get it back, but we’ve been good. We are a good team. You look at our players. It’s just when we get into injury trouble, we don’t have the depth that can really recover from that. So, injuries hurt us in a different way.
You’ve seen guys like David Jiricek and Liam Ohgren kind of grow up before your eyes here, among some of the guys that have been thrust into bigger roles …
They’re growing up, they haven’t grown up. They still have a lot to learn, so they’re not a finished product, that’s for sure. They need to just keep working, listen to their coaches, listen to the development guys, they’ll be fine. But they’ve got a lot to learn.
You’ve got 4 Nations coming up and then right after that is the NHL trade deadline. Do you get to sleep at all?
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I sleep like a baby, actually. It’s kind of funny, but I do. You know what? I really enjoy it. I’m not a very stressful guy. Because I get emotional sometimes you might think that I have a lot of stress in my life. I don’t. I think I’m pretty lucky because I’m naturally laid back. I don’t feel a lot of stress or pressure. I just focus on my task. And I will tell you the biggest thing for me, the most important thing for me, is the help I have. The people that are around me with the Minnesota Wild — the assistant general managers, all the directors of the departments — they’re world class. And then the guys at USA Hockey, all the other general managers and (Wild assistant general manager) Chris Kelleher, they are world class people. I’m not doing this alone. I’m not.
It’s your name at the top of the masthead, though, right?
Yeah, but honestly the people that I get to work with take so much off of my plate and they take so much workload away from me and stress out of my life that I can focus on the big decisions. and I’m very, very grateful for that. I couldn’t do it without the people that I have. And I have a really supportive family. They give me great advice and keep me humble and give me lots of love, no matter what. Those are the things that allow me to do this. The people in my life allow me to do this relatively stress free.
You played with Marc-Andre Fleury, a long time ago. How much fun is it to be his boss and see what he’s doing late in his career?
It’s great. It’s awesome. I joked with him when he first got here and said, ‘Well now you have to call me boss.’ And so every now and then he’ll be like, ‘Hey boss, how you doing?’ But it’s great. He’s just been everything that we expected him to be. I think just his presence, his leadership, his guidance, kind of showing guys how a Hall of Famer operates day in and day out. He’s as good as advertised. He’s been great.
Tom Chorske sent out the YouTube of you and several Devils bringing the Stanley Cup on set with David Letterman after you won it in 1995. I noticed you were the only guy who sat down. Were you expecting to get interviewed at that point?
I would watch Letterman every night, and I just wanted to sit in the chair. That was it. I knew what we were doing. They told us exactly what we were doing, but I just wanted to sit down and just say that I sat in the chair. I sat in the chair. That was it.
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That had to be a pretty incredible part of your life.
That was. That was an incredible moment. Because David Letterman was as big as they get back then. You know, it was David Letterman. I wasn’t gonna waste the opportunity.
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