Dylan Larkin<\/a> remains the No. 1 option for Minnesota. The 29-year-old forward, who turns 30 on July 30th, finished his 2025-26 season scoring 67 points in 74 games and had a +3 rating. After 11 seasons with the Red Wings, they have not made the playoffs for ten straight. Larkin has only played five career games in the postseason, which came in his rookie year of 2015-16. He has five years left on an eight-year contract at an $8.7MM cap hit, which will pay him until he is 34 years old in 2031. He holds a full no-trade clause for the next 2 seasons, then becomes a 10-team trade list. There are quite a few gold medal connections in the State of Hockey, add a chance to make history for the 25-year-old franchise in bringing the Stanley Cup to Minnesota. Larkin has strong connections with Quinn Hughes<\/a>, Matt Boldy<\/a>, and Brock Faber<\/a>, all of whom were key parts of bringing the U.S. the gold in Milan. Guerin has also demonstrated his yearning to build the Wild\u2019s first cup-winning team, emerging victorious in the sweepstakes for Hughes, whom he pulled out from Vancouver.<\/p>\n Minnesota saw difficulties in its center depth this past playoffs, and adding any top-six would prove worthwhile to supplement the services of Joel Eriksson Ek<\/a> down the middle. The Wild have offered a big package<\/a> to send Steve Yzerman<\/a>\u2018s way, but apparently, Detroit is taking its time to see if an agreement is fitting for these two teams. Perhaps a goalie swap could occur here, too, if Minnesota wanted to exchange one of its two goaltenders, either Filip Gustavsson<\/a> or Jesper Wallstedt<\/a>, for Sebastian Cossa<\/a>.<\/p>\n If they can\u2019t snag him, there are secondary options Minnesota could settle for. Russo provides a few options given Minnesota\u2019s window; Vincent Trocheck<\/a> is a good bet to take. Guerin notably ran Team USA at the Olympics, and Trocheck\u2019s reliability proved formidable on that team\u2019s path to victory. Trocheck carries three years remaining on a contract with a $5.625 million cap hit, kills penalties, has a great presence at the faceoff dot, and\u00a0finished his 2025-26 season scoring 53 points in 67 games played with the New York Rangers.<\/p>\n Among other options, Boston is taking calls on Pavel Zacha<\/a>, but the price is high, and they\u2019d prefer to keep him long-term. Nico Hischier<\/a> appears to be on track to remain in New Jersey. Do you take a gamble on Jesperi Kotkaniemi<\/a> or the large contract of Elias Pettersson<\/a>? The younger options that have circled like Mason McTavish<\/a> and Shane Wright<\/a> would be upside worthy considerations, but the Wild, who are on the cusp of a conference final, need players who have \u2018been there, done that\u2019 so to speak.<\/p>\n Along with a depleted draft cupboard in 2026, Guerin\u2019s focus must be on figuring out Mats Zuccarello<\/a>\u2019s future as well as sitting down with Quinn Hughes and John Hynes<\/a> on their futures, with both requiring extensions soon. It\u2019s no surprise that Minnesota checked in on Brady Tkachuk<\/a>; the Wild reportedly had an offer on the table for him as he had Minnesota as one of four preferred destinations, but with the left wing headed to Florida, eyes turn back towards the team\u2019s number one need, a middle man.<\/p>\n The team\u2019s depth chart down the middle highlights Ryan Hartman<\/a> on the last year of a three-year, $4MM AAV contract, Joel Eriksson Ek<\/a> with two-years at $5.25MM, and Michael McCarron<\/a>, who the Wild recently inked to a six-year, $3,333,333 AAV deal. Adding any of those big names listed above to this group would help put Minnesota in a tier above.<\/p>\n Photo Credit: Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Wild continue to be active this offseason. According to Michael Russo of The Athletic, Wild GM…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[55783,4828,385,99],"class_list":["post-721340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-bill-guerin","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/dylan-larkin-detroit-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n