{"id":542401,"date":"2026-03-15T17:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T17:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/542401\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T17:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T17:51:07","slug":"wild-gm-eyes-stanley-cup-after-winning-olympic-gold-medal-with-team-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/542401\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild GM eyes Stanley Cup after winning Olympic gold medal with Team USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs (28-27-12) are coming off a 3-2 shootout loss at the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday and are without captain Auston Matthews<\/a>, who will miss the remainder of the season<\/a> because of a grade 3 MCL tear and quad contusion he sustained in a knee-on-knee collision with Anaheim Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday. Gudas was suspended five games by the NHL Department of Player Safety on Friday.<\/p>\n

Matthews was Team USA captain in Milan and at the 4 Nations Face-Off last season. For\u00a0Guerin, who was GM for each team, the chance to personally get to know Matthews has provided a newfound appreciation of the center, both on and off the ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the world of\u00a0Auston,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cHe’s a great guy. He’s a great teammate. You can see that when he’s in there with all the guys. They all love him. He’s a quiet leader and lets his play do the talking for him. That\u2019s powerful. He\u2019s got a presence to him; you can feel that. We felt it at the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he did a fantastic job as our captain. Like Jack (Hughes) said, (Matthews is) a winner. And if you really watch him each and every night, the way he commits himself to a 200-foot game on both sides of the puck, it’s incredible. And I don’t think it’s talked about enough. He could be in the\u00a0Selke (Trophy) voting (as the NHL\u2019s best defensive forward) every single year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s an unfortunate situation that he got hurt. It seems like things have been tough (in Toronto). You never want your season to end like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Wild,\u00a0Guerin hopes their season extends deep into the spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed some grit, some size, some face-off guys, penalty killers, to solidify our bottom sixes at the Deadline, and we feel we checked those boxes,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m happy with it, our coaches are happy with it. We made our big move a couple of months ago getting (defenseman) Quinn Hughes<\/a>\u00a0from Vancouver, and I know there\u2019s fans who said going into the Deadline, \u201cGreat Hughes deal, what are you going to do for us now?\u201d It\u2019s part of the business. We got our business done; now it\u2019s just a matter of getting ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there’s versatility to our game. We’ve got speed and skill. We’ve got some heaviness to our lineup. We\u2019ve got goaltending. There’s a lot to like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with teams like the Dallas and Colorado looming in Minnesota\u2019s quest for the Stanley Cup?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s honestly just a matter of putting it all together at the right time.\u201d\u00a0Guerin said. \u201cThat’s for any team. I don’t care who you have in your lineup or on your team — if you’re not playing the right way at the right time, it’s going to be tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to me, that is more important than anything — having a clear understanding of what our identity is and what our game needs to be to have success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs (28-27-12) are coming off a 3-2 shootout loss at the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-542401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}