Bill Guerin on Wild’s lackluster play: ‘There’s no excuse whatsoever for any of this’

During his chat with The Athletic before Sunday’s win, Guerin didn’t buy that the Wild’s recent lackluster play, especially at home where they’ve lost nine of their past 13 and are 11-12-1, is due to the dog days of the season and a team fatigued because injuries finally caught up to it.

“No, fuck that. Fuck that,” Guerin said. “You can be low on energy and still play well. You’ve got to use your head. You know what? Everybody’s tired. Everybody has a condensed schedule. Everybody has injuries. Everybody in the league has what we have. There’s no excuse whatsoever for any of this.”

Though Guerin’s not mincing words, he has not yet walked into the dressing room and ripped into his team despite the fact the Wild’s league-best 19-5-4 record Dec. 10 has suddenly become 29-17-4 nearly seven weeks later. After a blowout loss to the Dallas Stars in November 2023, the next morning hours before the Wild flew to Stockholm for two Global Series games and a little more than a week before Dean Evason was fired, Guerin did storm into the room, met with the team and basically went after every individual one by one. But Guerin trusts that John Hynes has this handled, is saying the right things, conveying the right things and will get things turned around during a tough stretch that has seen Minnesota lose six of its past nine games.

“Look, every team goes through their ups and downs of the season,” Guerin said. “But I just don’t love the way we’re playing right now because there’s no energy. We’re on the perimeter, we’re not doing the little detail things that are hard to do, but they allow you to win. I know our guys care. I know they work hard. But working hard and competing hard are two different things. We need more compete.”