Wild GM Bill Guerin: American hockey needs to keep its foot on the gas

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2 days ago

The Minnesota Wild are not one of the eight teams that employed Bill Guerin during his nearly two-decade career as an NHL player. But the Wild general manager skated for the home team in St. Paul once. In the fall of 2004, Guerin played for Team USA in the World Cup of Hockey.,
Before packed houses at Xcel Energy Center, Guerin had teammates like Brett Hull, Mike Modano, Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chelios, Keith Tkachuk and current Minnesota Frost head coach Ken Klee. The Americans beat Slovakia in the preliminary round, and downed Russia in the quarterfinals before falling to Finland in a tight, 2-1 semifinal game.
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Between three trips to the Olympics, a pair of appearances in the World Cup and two stints with the American entry in World Juniors when he was a teenager, Guerin spent nearly 90 games wearing red, white and blue and vying for a medal on various international hockey stages.
He won gold in the 1996 World Cup, and silver in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. So, when USA Hockey needed a general manager for February's 4 Nations Face-Off, Guerin was the logical choice, and put together a team that came within an overtime goal of gold. He will serve in the same capacity for Team USA in the 2026 Olympics, which will be held next February in Italy.
In early May, as he held his season-ending meeting with the Minnesota media following the Wild's first-round playoff exit, Guerin's bags were already packed for the 2025 World Championship in Denmark and Sweden. And while there were seven Wild players and/or prospects dotting several of the international team rosters, Guerin was focused on his nation first and employer second.
'I put a big emphasis on it. It's not necessarily how many goals you score or this or that or whatever,' Guerin said of the tournament held in Europe each spring. 'It's, 'When are we going to win that tournament?' We need to win that tournament soon. We need our best players going.'
Rite of spring
The NHL pauses for the Olympics and competitions such as the inaugural 4 Nations Faceoff so that its top players can skate for their countries. The World Championship is played at the same time as the NHL playoffs in the spring, meaning that the rosters for the United States, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and others are composed primarily of skaters, defensemen and goalies from NHL teams that either didn't make the playoffs or were knocked out in the first round.
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Among the top players for Team USA in 2025 were former Gophers star Logan Cooley, Frank Nazar and Zach Werenski, whose NHL teams — Utah, Chicago and Columbus, respectively — did not make it to the 2025 playoffs. Wild defenseman Zeev Buium was on a plane for Europe to skate for the Americans just a few days after Minnesota was knocked out of the postseason by Vegas.
Other Wild properties in the tournament were defense prospect David Spacek (Czechia), goaltending prospect Samuel Hlavaj (Slovakia), defenseman Jared Spurgeon (Canada), retiring goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury (Canada), defenseman Jonas Brodin (Sweden) and forward Marcus Johansson (Sweden).
With Guerin and other USA Hockey higher-ups in attendance for several of the games in Stockholm, the American team did something it had last accomplished in 1933. After just one loss in their seven preliminary round games, the Americans bested Finland, Sweden and Switzerland in the medal round to bring home gold.
The finale versus the Swiss, whose international hockey stock is rising fast, was an overtime thriller, with Buffalo forward Tage Thompson scoring the game's only goal.
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'It was a great experience … and the buy-in from players was awesome. There was a good feel,' Guerin said this week while taking some much-needed time away from the rink. 'The guys wanted to be there, and that's what I've been trying to push is (that) it's a great experience to get to play for your country.'
Guerin noted that the 1933 team won gold in an era when rosters had fewer than a dozen players, goalies wore little to no padding, and the forward pass was a relatively new element to the game.
'This is really the first time in modern history that we've done it,' Guerin said.
And this gold medal may have come at what is looking more and more like the best of times for American hockey. Guerin pointed out that the American entry in sled hockey — an adapted version of the game for players who have lost limbs or dealt with paralysis — is dominating the world stage.
Best of times?
Team USA won its second consecutive gold at the 2025 World Juniors and will go for the three-peat when the tournament comes to the Twin Cities in December.
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In April, the U.S. women beat Canada in overtime to claim the World Championship in Czechia. And when they get to Italy next winter, the Americans will be pushing for their first men's Olympic gold since the 1980 Miracle On Ice, while the Team USA women won their most recent gold in 2018.
'There have been a lot of great accomplishments, and the player pool for all of the different categories we play in is having success. It's a good thing,' Guerin said. 'We don't want to take our foot off the gas, though. The World Championships happen every year. We don't just want to say, 'Hey, great, we won one, let's back off.' We want to continue to compete for medals. That's where we are now.'
With an eye toward the Olympics, Guerin said perhaps the most important thing key members of Team USA gained this month, in addition to those gold medals, was the experience of playing in meaningful games while wearing the nation's colors.
'A lot of times there are very, very good players that haven't played in meaningful games,' Guerin said. 'We had some guys in that category that really stepped up and proved that they can do that.'
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The process of choosing the Team USA roster for World Juniors will begin in late July in Minneapolis with the World Juniors Summer Showcase, which will include teams from Canada, Sweden and Finland as well as the United States, and will be held at Ridder Arena on the U of M campus. Minnesota Gophers men's hockey coach Bob Motzko is the American coach for World Juniors, for the third time in his career.
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