Minnesota Wild

A replacement franchise, built on a grudge

The Minnesota North Stars left for Dallas in 1993 and the state spent the rest of the decade trying to get hockey back. The NHL awarded Saint Paul an expansion franchise on 25 June 1997; the name was settled on 22 January 1998, and the team played its first game in the 2000-01 season. Bob Naegele Jr. led the original ownership group. Craig Leipold bought the club in 2008 and still holds the majority stake.

The branding was deliberate rather than decorative. The colour list reads forest green, iron range red, harvest gold and Minnesota wheat. The crest is a single drawing that works as both an animal's head and a nightscape, with the eye doubling as the north star — a direct nod to the departed North Stars and to the state motto. The phrase attached to all of it, State of Hockey, is used without irony in Minnesota, where the boys' high-school tournament outdraws plenty of professional sport.

The arena opened on 29 September 2000 at a cost of $170 million, with the state putting in a $65 million no-interest loan. It listed a hockey capacity of 17,954 after a 2012 adjustment and was called Xcel Energy Center for 25 years.

Twenty-three years of nearly

The third season produced the high point of the first two decades. In 2002-03 the Wild came from 3-1 down twice in the same postseason and reached the Western Conference Final, where Anaheim swept them. Nothing that followed matched it. The first division title came in 2007-08, the season Marián Gáborík set club records with 42 goals and 83 points.

On the opening day of free agency in July 2012 the club signed Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to identical 13-year, $98 million contracts, a double signing that bought a decade of steady regular seasons and no series wins after 2015. Both were bought out in 2021, and the dead cap charges from those buyouts squeezed the roster for years afterwards.

The turn came in 2020-21, when Kirill Kaprizov arrived from the KHL at 23 and won the Calder Trophy. He is the franchise's all-time leader in points per game (1.21) and goals per game (0.58), holds the single-season records of 108 points and 47 goals from 2021-22, and is the only player in club history with three consecutive 40-goal seasons. Between 2015 and 2025 the Wild lost nine first-round series in a row.

December 2025: the trade that changed the team

On 12 December 2025 general manager Bill Guerin sent Marco Rossi, Liam Öhgren, Zeev Buium and a first-round pick to Vancouver for Quinn Hughes. It was the sort of deal Minnesota had never made — surrendering three young assets for a defenceman already at the top of his position. Hughes put up 53 points in 48 regular-season games for the Wild. Jeff Petry, Nick Foligno and Bobby Brink followed before the deadline.

The team finished 46-24-12 for 104 points, third in the Central Division and third in the Western Conference. Kaprizov had 89 points (45 goals, 44 assists) and Matt Boldy 85 (42 goals, 43 assists), the first time the club has had two players score 40 in the same year. Mats Zuccarello added 54 points in 59 games. Marcus Johansson played his 1,000th NHL game on 9 November 2025 and captain Jared Spurgeon his own on 13 March 2026.

In the first round they beat Dallas in six, the first series win since 2015. The second round went badly: Colorado, on the way to the Presidents' Trophy, took it in five, and the Wild led Game 5 by three goals before losing 4-3 in overtime. Hughes had 15 points in 11 playoff games. John Hynes, who took over midway through 2023-24, enters his fourth season behind the bench.

$17 million a year, and a defenceman who will not sign

On 30 September 2025 the Wild announced an eight-year, $136 million extension for Kaprizov at a $17 million average annual value, running from 2026-27 through 2033-34. It was the largest total value in NHL history at the time and the highest cap hit anyone had carried since the cap was introduced in 2005. At signing he had 386 points in 319 games.

Hughes is the unresolved half. He is in the last year of the six-year, $47.1 million deal he signed in Vancouver, at $7.85 million against the cap. Cale Makar re-set the market on 28 August 2026 with a $163.2 million contract in Colorado worth $20.5 million a year. Hughes did not sign an extension before the mid-September cut-off that would have allowed eight years; under the new collective agreement his maximum with Minnesota is now seven. Speaking on 9 September 2026 he said the deal would get done whenever he felt it needed to be, and that he did not feel backed against a wall. His two brothers, Jack and Luke, both play in New Jersey, and reporting through the summer suggested he may prefer a shorter term that lines his free agency up with Jack's. He has said Minnesota is a good fit; he has not said he is staying.

Off the ice, the club and the city put a $600 million renovation proposal on the table on 3 March 2026 — $450 million for the arena, $150 million for the neighbouring RiverCentre and Roy Wilkins Auditorium — with $200 million requested from the legislature, $162.5 million from Saint Paul through a half-cent sales tax extension and $162.5 million from the Wild, who would cover overruns. Earlier requests had failed. The building has been Grand Casino Arena since 2025 under a 14-year naming deal with Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley, an enterprise of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

What they are icing this season

Camp opened at TRIA Rink on 17 September 2026 with 48 players — 25 forwards, 16 defencemen and seven goaltenders. Blake Coleman came from Calgary on 2 July with Olli Maatta in exchange for Jake Middleton; Coleman is 34, won Cups with Tampa Bay in 2020 and 2021 and had 35 points in 69 games last season. Maxim Shabanov, 25, signed for one year at $1.6 million after 18 points in 44 games as an Islanders rookie, and was given a look on the first line alongside Kaprizov in the opening sessions. Zuccarello was not re-signed and joined Los Angeles on a one-year, $1 million deal.

Goal is the immediate problem. Filip Gustavsson had hip surgery and starts the season on injured reserve, with a return expected in November, leaving Jesper Wallstedt — a first-round pick in 2021 who has waited a long time for this — as the starter, with Calvin Pickard behind him. The other fixable number is the penalty kill, which finished at 79.8 per cent, 16th in the league.

The preseason ran against Chicago on 19 and 21 September and Dallas on 23 and 25 September. The 84-game regular season opens on the road at Nashville on Thursday 1 October at 7pm and runs to 10 April. October is heavy with travel — ten road games, including a five-game trip from the 20th to the 27th through Edmonton, Calgary, Seattle, Vancouver and Utah. The 42-game home schedule is weighted to midwinter, with nine home dates each in December and January and a seven-game homestand from 12 to 28 December.

Matchnight in Saint Paul

The building is a four-level open bowl with 74 suites and crow's nests in each corner, and it was designed around sightlines rather than sponsor real estate, which is why reviewers still rate it highly at 26 years old. Its two signatures are structural: a lighthouse in one corner that lights up and sounds a foghorn on every goal, and a guest who leans out of another corner before the opening faceoff to shout the two words that start every game in Minnesota.

Criticism is consistent and narrow. The organ is underused in favour of recorded rock during stoppages, the scoreboard does not show who is on the ice, and the concourses and plumbing are the parts of the $450 million renovation pitch that fans recognise from experience.