ST. PAUL, Minn. — The day before the Olympic tournament began in Milan, Minnesota Wild and U.S. general manager Bill Guerin was peppered with questions about players as reporters worked on previews and banked quotes for potential stories later in the Olympics.

Asked about Toronto Maple Leafs and U.S. captain Auston Matthews, Guerin looked like he was ready to go through the motions and spout off a couple of cliches and one-liners, but then he looked up, realized it was TSN’s Mark Masters and realized the sound bites he was about to deliver would be aired all over Canada and especially in Toronto.

That’s when Guerin turned up the volume and began to really pump Matthews’ tires as a player, captain and person.

And since the United States won gold, he hasn’t stopped raving, particularly when he does interviews in Toronto.

As Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman joked on his 32 Thoughts podcast Friday, there may as well be a neon sign on the side of Grand Casino Arena with the words, “Come here, Auston. Quinn is waiting for you.”

To be clear, Friedman was joking. But the reality is there’s a reason — and a good one — that Guerin didn’t blow the Wild’s remaining potential trade assets at this year’s deadline for B players. He has every intention this offseason or next season of trying to pull off a deal for another A-plus like Quinn Hughes.

As Pierre LeBrun wrote after the trade deadline, this could be an explosive offseason.

There’s already speculation that something has to give in Toronto. Could that something be trading the now-injured Matthews? Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk (Hughes’ good friend) and St. Louis Blues center Robert Thomas could also be available. Then there’s the New Jersey Devils, with Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier, although Tom Fitzgerald has no desire to break up his core.

With free agency this summer thin league-wide, the best and perhaps only way for teams such as the Wild to make a significant impact on their rosters will be through the trade market. And with most of the aforementioned top-level stars holding some level of trade protection, whether it’s a full no-move like Matthews and Tkachuk (Hughes’ good friend) or a no-trade like Thomas, it’s kind of like free agency, where a player would have to pick the Wild as his destination.

Quinn Hughes didn’t have trade protection when the Canucks were moving him in December, but president Jim Rutherford worked with Hughes’ camp on his destination. That Hughes was open to coming to Minnesota says a lot about the franchise’s appeal as a destination — now and going forward.

“I’m very proud,” Guerin said after the Hughes trade. “Look, I love Minnesota. Our players love Minnesota. This is a great place to play. But no matter what, whether you have good weather, good taxes, good, I don’t know, whatever, the hockey has to be good. Hockey has to be. You can live in the sun. You can live in these great places, or make a little more money, but if the hockey is not good, you won’t be happy. So that’s what really matters. If the hockey is good, if your job is good, you will be happy. And I think he’ll be really happy.”

The hockey, at least before the past three home games, has been very good in Minnesota now since Hughes’ arrival. Many consider the Wild a Stanley Cup contender for the first time in, maybe, forever. They’re in the top five in the league in points and boast three legitimate superstars in Hughes, Matt Boldy and Kirill Kaprizov, plus Brock Faber, Joel Eriksson Ek and two strong goaltenders in Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt.

As Guerin put it, “Great players want to play with other great players.” Future Hall of Famer Steven Stamkos reportedly had the Wild among the three teams he would have been open to getting moved to at the deadline (along with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Dallas Stars).

Wild defenseman Zach Bogosian, an 18-year NHL veteran and 2020 Stanley Cup champion, has seen the perception of the franchise change throughout his career. Bogosian signed a two-year extension with Minnesota in March 2024 after being acquired from the Lightning.

“If you look at our lineup right now, it kind of checks every single box,” Bogosian said. “We can play skilled, we can play physical, we can play fast, we can defend well. If you’re a guy around the league and you’re playing against us or peeking in once and a while, I think you see the trajectory of the (Fabers), the (Boldys), (Kaprizov) and now Hughes. I think that probably excites a lot of players that want to play on a good team and be part of something special. I definitely think that it’s changed.”

Because Guerin remained patient at the trade deadline, he now has multiple assets he can use for big-game hunting on the market in the summer, including Wallstedt, Danila Yurov, Charlie Stramel, Adam Benak and the team’s 2027 first-round pick.

Kaprizov and Gustavsson have no-move clauses, and Eriksson Ek, Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, Jared Spurgeon and Jake Middleton have modified no-trade clauses. Everybody else, including Jonas Brodin, is without protection.

When Hughes was acquired, he mentioned he had already gotten to know and respect Guerin from their interactions at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February 2025. Hughes appreciated how Guerin handled his injury situation at the event and said he wouldn’t forget Guerin had the guts to give up a huge package (Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren and a 2026 first-rounder) in a trade for him.

You can imagine how many other relationships Guerin has built through USA Hockey.

“You know me, I don’t sit on the sidelines,” Guerin said recently. “I’m pretty involved with the group, in there shooting the breeze with them and making fun of their clothes, their sticks, (Jack) Eichel’s tape job. It’s terrible. But he’s a hell of a player. It works for him.”

Guerin was anxious to make a big move at this deadline but stayed patient, knowing it wasn’t sensible to give up what he would have had to for somebody like Vincent Trocheck if it took him out of the potential big names this summer.

Watching the Wild’s past three games, with their continued lack of a top center, could further show him what the team needs.

Still, Guerin sees the window open and wants to pounce. People around the league expect him to.

“You’ve got Billy Guerin, his pedigree,” Flyers coach and Guerin’s buddy Rick Tocchet said. “It’s just a matter of time. This team is, it’s a good hockey team. And just getting Quinn, you know, the best defenseman and one of the best players in the league, is just a game changer for this organization.”

Wild trip for Wild fan

August Jewell’s “bucket-list” trip to his first Wild game turned into a version of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.”

Jewell, 25, is a fan who lives in Petersburg, Alaska, a town of about 3,000. He watches every game. After he recently completed a five-year apprenticeship to become an IBEW journeyman power lineman, his father, Bob, wanted to take him and his brother, Cooper, 28, to a Wild game. But when their flights from Seattle on Friday were canceled, they decided to fly to Chicago and then drive.

But they arrived at 1 a.m. and weren’t able to rent a car that late, so they slept on chairs in the lounge at O’Hare airport until the rental agencies opened.

“It was one thing after another,” August said.

August, Cooper and Bob Jewell made the trek to Minnesota to see the Wild over the weekend. (Joe Smith / The Athletic)

They made the six-hour drive, beating Saturday night’s snowstorm and getting to Grand Casino Arena for the Wild’s game against the Rangers. August, worried that Sunday’s game would get canceled due to the storm, wore four of his Wild jerseys that night (Hughes’ U.S. jersey, Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek and Boldy). August wore his Boldy jersey on Sunday and Cooper wore his Mikko Koivu jersey.

Bob Jewell, an IBEW journeyman telecommunications technician, said all the adventures and inconveniences were worth it for the memories with his sons.

“Definitely a bucket list,” Bob said. “He’s the biggest fan in the family, so we wanted to get him here, and here we are.”

Everything worked out in the end — well, except for the Wild laying two eggs in a row at home.

Lee’s continued ‘last games’ in Minnesota

After 27 years as an NHL referee, Chris Lee is retiring before the end of the regular season.

The Lakeville, Minn., resident was supposed to work his 121st and final game at Grand Casino Arena on Thursday night when the Wild hosted the Flyers. However, there are so many injuries to officials right now, Lee already has a game added this upcoming Thursday against Chicago.

That’s supposed to be his 124th and final game.

How’d it get to 124 when Thursday was supposed to be his 121st and final? The snowstorm that just blitzed the Twin Cities caused incoming travel problems for officials, so Lee was called upon to do Saturday’s and Sunday’s games, as well — an unusual three home Wild games in a row.

In fact, because of an injury to linesman Ben O’Quinn in Saturday’s game and the inability to get another linesman into Minnesota due to flight cancellations, one of Saturday’s refs, Brandon Schrader, was called upon to be a linesman in Sunday’s game.

Either way, as of this very moment, Lee’s final game in his “home rink” is supposed to be Thursday night. But the way things have been going, maybe we will see the orange armbanded No. 28 on the ice there again.