By making big moves, Minnesota suddenly becomes the 'Gopher-It State'

NHL teams made so many trades at Monday's deadline that the office that certifies transactions had a backup a mile long. Wild General Manager Bill Guerin contributed to the gridlock with a blockbuster trade for future Hall of Fame goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.

With calm having been restored, Guerin made a salient point in a phone conversation Wednesday morning: After all that frenetic wheeling-and-dealing, "One team is going to win" the Stanley Cup, he said.

Everyone else will move on knowing they weren't good enough, even those who made bold, aggressive trades to bolster their roster. But here's the essential part of Guerin's observation:

…

"That doesn't mean the moves weren't worth it," he said. "You have to try."

Bingo. Exclamation point. Tape that to the front door of every sports franchise in the Twin Cities.

Teams in this market have made 10-story splashes in the past week. There has been a disruption to our senses and order, especially with the Twins executing the mother of all stunners in signing a superstar free agent to a mega-contract.

This suddenly has become The Gopher-It State.

Those moves guarantee nothing but mean everything. Having the guts to take risks and show a willingness to make a financial commitment is all that fans and observers can ask from sports teams. They want to see and believe that organizations care — truly care — about trying to win.

Exhibit A: One week ago, my interest in the start of baseball season was negligible. Now I can't wait for Opening Day.

Why? Because the Twins signed Carlos Correa.

Funny how that works.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Twins surpassed 100,000 sales — single-game tickets, Twin Pass tickets and groups — since the Correa news broke.

This is not to suggest that organizations make moves simply for PR sake or show reckless disregard for the future by trading away assets aimlessly. It's about being calculated and aggressive in building a roster, about identifying an opportunity to strike. It's about not allowing fear that an audacious move might backfire serve as a paralyzing agent.

Just follow Guerin's advice.

"If you don't take a swing, you're never going to hit the ball," he said. "That's the business we're in. We're in the business of winning. It's nothing else."

That is the same analogy Wild owner Craig Leipold used before this season when I asked him if he considered the blockbuster signings of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter back in 2012 ultimately a failure because the team never really came close to winning a Stanley Cup in their tenure.

"Let me tell you: As an owner, that was not a failure," Leipold said, noting the Wild became relevant again while rekindling interest in its fanbase. "Would I do it over again? In an absolute second. They were huge for our franchise. Swinging for the fences, no problem."

If anything, these recent splashy moves leave you wanting more. The Twins sent a wholly unexpected jolt through Major League Baseball by signing Correa. People are paying attention to the Twins now. Including Correa, who can opt-out of his contract after one season, which means Derek Falvey's regime is under pressure to keep adding talent.

They can't stop here. They must add legitimate starting pitching to convince Correa that the team's future is credible and that the organization will do whatever it takes to pursue a championship. That's the only way to sandblast the "cheap" narrative.

New Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah offered the phrase "competitive rebuild" to describe his team's approach after signing pass rusher Za'Darius Smith. The sum of their personnel moves suggests the Vikings remain in win-now mode, in alignment with ownership's "super-competitive" mandate.

Adofo-Mensah framed it thusly: "When people look at teams, they sometimes do it in a very binary way and they ask, 'Are you either all-in or tearing down and rebuilding?' The way we look at it is, we're trying to navigate both worlds. We're trying to live in today and tomorrow."

That sounds ambiguous and tricky to pull off.

Adding a player of Smith's pedigree should be celebrated, though. They joined the Twins and Wild in creating big headlines this week. Time will reveal if there is a big payoff that comes out of it, but Guerin's words should always be the guiding force:

If they don't swing, they'll never know.