NHL Scout Scoffs at What Minnesota Wild Have to Offer at Trade Deadline

The NHL trade deadline is quickly approaching (Friday) but Minnesota Wild fans don’t appear to be paying all that close attention to a date that normally draws all sorts of headlines and drama in the days that lead up to it.

But this year, crickets. Why? Because general manager Bill Guerin gave extensions with no-trade clauses to most of his best veteran deadline assets like Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Johansson, Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartman and all of them had heavy trade protection.

NHL Scout on Minnesota Wild: “They’ve got s*** to trade”

Thus, front offices across the league are disengaged with what’s happening in the state of hockey. So much so that one team scout looked at NHL insider Jim Cerny (Sportsnaut) like he had dropped in on him from Mars when asked if there are any players of interest being dangled in Minnesota. “They’ve got shit to trade”, he told the veteran reporter bluntly.

Forward Brandon Duhaime, who’s scored four goals and is second on the Wild with 66 penalty minutes, is most likely to be traded since he can be an unrestricted free agent at season’s end.

But that didn’t excite one personnel figure, who told Sportsnaut, “The Wild? They’ve got [expletive] to trade. Unless you tell me they’re dealing Marco Rossi or something.”

Jim Cerny – Sportsnaut

That quote of gold shows how ridiculous the reports were last week that claimed Brandon Duhaime was really getting other teams across the league excited, leading up to the trade deadline. Those reports smelled fishy last week and whichever league scout gave Sportsnaut that quote proved what we already knew. That nobody cares about Brandon Duhaime. Let’s be real. If he was any good, he’d be playing more for the Wild.

Marc-Andre Fleury staying changes Bill Guerin’s plans

With Marc-Andre Fleury wanting to stick around, and possibly even sign a contract extension to remain with the Minnesota Wild for one more season, the rest of the league knows that this franchise has nothing worthy to offer anyone at the 2024 trade deadline. Come chat with us again this offseason, is pretty much the attitude.

Related: Wild’s Jake Middleton Uses Jeremy Lauzon’s Face as Punching Bag in Epic Beatdown

Is that good or bad? It’s indifferent. But there’s no doubt that re-upping on all those veterans and passing out no-trade clauses like they are candy has strapped Guerin from an options standpoint, in the short-term. By the time the Parise/Suter buyout penalties fall off the books in 2025-26, what is the temperature of Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy and Brock Faber? Time will tell.

I’m not saying Bill Guerin should start worrying about his job because I do not feel that way yet. But there’s no doubt he has used up a lot of the honeymoon phase he carried into this post Parise/Suter era of Wild hockey. We all knew it would be a difficult couple years when those buyouts were hitting the hardest. But living it is harder than digesting the theory back then.

** An earlier version of this article had the above quote being from an NHL “executive. Shortly after posting, I was corrected and told it was a team scout who said it, not an executive.