NHL Insider: Former Wild executive Lynn now agent and author

The assistant general manager for the Wild's first nine years, the guy who went toe-to-toe with agents Allan Walsh and Ron Salcer in hard-nosed, often ugly negotiations to get Marian Gaborik signed, is now an agent himself.

But not only has Tom Lynn crossed the aisle, Lynn has suddenly become an author, releasing his first book — a behind-the-scenes, inside look at how the Wild was built from the ground up.

"How to Bake an NHL Franchise From Scratch, the First Era of the Minnesota Wild" was penned by Lynn and published last week by Starry Night Publishing. The 463-page book can be purchased on Amazon and is available for Nook and Kindle.

I have not read the book yet, but Lynn, who wasn't retained by Chuck Fletcher after he was hired to replace GM Doug Risebrough in 2009, sent me excerpts. I talked to him Wednesday about many of the anecdotes in the book and why he wrote it.

"Once in a while, I'd be telling stories and someone would say, 'You should write a book,' " said Lynn, whose agency represents or advises more than 50 players, mostly amateurs. "Well, I'm not really a book writer. So about 16 to 18 months ago, I started to write down some of the stories, but they were just stories. After I had 14 or 15 of them down, it started to feel more like a disorganized book."

After stitching them together chronologically and chopping out a bunch that could have lengthened the book to 1,000 pages, Lynn published "almost a collection of blogs between 500 and 2,000 words. It's really a collection of stories."

Lynn takes fans from the early years when he and Risebrough lived together (Risebrough had a "roundabout way of speaking that was part Yogi Berra, part Ralph Kiner and part management-book text") to Risebrough's courtship of his old Montreal Canadiens teammate Jacques Lemaire as the franchise's first coach. He'll take you through their final year in 2008-09 when the relationship between Risebrough and Lemaire soured.

Lynn tells stories about why Minnetonka's Steve Aronson was the first Wild player ever signed, and how and why the Wild went about trading for Manny Fernandez. In fact, it wasn't until afterward that assistant coach Mario Tremblay told them Fernandez was Lemaire's nephew.

"None of us had known," Lynn writes. "The Wild had traded for its coach's nephew, with the expectation he would become a No. 1 goalie, without knowing it."

Lynn explains why the Wild let Andrew Brunette go the first time, how Wes Walz became Lemaire's defensive center and how "Scotty Bowman was the unseen hand behind the Wild" because of his influence on the Wild's Lemaire, Risebrough, Tremblay, Guy Lapointe and Mike Ramsey.

Lynn goes into great specificity about negotiations with Walsh, who battled the Wild with Pascal Dupuis and Gaborik in 2004 (from the beginning, Walsh warned Lynn on Gaborik, "You have to think big here"), discloses how the team lost some unnamed prospects to drugs and alcohol and even divulges how owner Bob Naegele once told off a certain beat writer in the press box.

"There are a couple agents I dealt with who won't like what I put," Lynn said. "I think some of our opponents won't like the way I characterized things, and some players may not like it. I don't criticize, but I detailed conversations and explain why we took certain positions or why we moved on from somebody.

Former Wild left wing Pascal Dupuis, who has suffered a string of difficult on-ice injuries, is now sidelined from the Pittsburgh Penguins with a blood clot in one of his lungs.

"The hockey stuff, this is all stuff you come back from. You're a hockey player. You're supposed to come back from that stuff," Dupuis said. "But the other stuff? The clot, the lungs … it has nothing to do with hockey. It's life-threatening, and you have to think of yourself and family and loved ones before hockey comes to mind."

Eric Lindros, inducted with former teammate John LeClair into the Flyers Hall of Fame before Philadelphia hosted the Wild on Thursday, was a man among boys playing junior hockey in Oshawa.

Wild coach Mike Yeo had the "misfortune" of playing against him while with Sudbury.

"For somebody to be able to dominate the game the way he did both physically and skillwise, it was hard to watch playing against him, but it really was impressive," Yeo said. "He could really take over a game any way."

"If somebody doesn't have faith in you and doesn't want you to have success, it's tough to have success," Hiller said. "I've been fortunate here that people want me to have success."

Monday: 6:30 p.m at Florida (FSN)

Wednesday: 7 p.m. vs. Los Angeles (FSN)

Friday: 7:30 p.m. at Dallas (FSN Plus)

Saturday: 7 p.m. vs. St. Louis (FSN)

After a slow start to the season, the former Gophers and Blaine star was sensational last week. He had a four-point game in Anaheim and two goals and the shootout winner in San Jose.

« We have to get him going. »