Scoggins: Bill Guerin’s trade to get Quinn Hughes on the Wild was exactly the right move

Fans of the Wild expected Christmas to come in July. That was the expectation of a big payoff as the sand in the hourglass finally disappeared on the Parise-Suter buyouts.

Bill Guerin didn’t leave a lump of coal, but the President of Hockey Operations also didn’t execute the type of blockbuster summer move that makes the NHL take notice.

He waited until the actual holiday season to do that.

“I don’t know what the right moment is,” Guerin said, “but it you wait for it, you’re going to miss it. When it’s a player of this caliber, the right time is always now.”

Big Swingin’ Bill pushed his chips to the center of the table with a seismic trade for superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes, a Top 15 player in the NHL and top two defenseman. It was the type of move that made the entire league stop and say whoa.

A move of this nature is neither inexpensive, nor without risk. Guerin acted decisively, unafraid of the what ifs.

Cheers to that.

The Wild are stuck in a rut of being just good enough. Good enough to make the playoffs, but nothing beyond that.

In losing to the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round last season, the Wild became the first team in the four major men’s professional sports leagues — NHL, NFL, NBA and MLB — to make the postseason eight times in a 10-year span and lose in the first round every time, according to the analytics site OptaSTATS.

Good enough isn’t good enough for Guerin.

The Wild woke up Tuesday with the fourth-most points in the NHL, which puts them third in the Central Division behind Colorado and Dallas.

Their division is a beast. Adding Hughes shows that Guerin believes in his team and isn’t scared to go for it.

Finally free of buyout purgatory, Guerin has been waiting in the weeds, ready to strike when a whopper of a deal presented itself. Surrounding Kirill Kaprizov with more talent needs to serve as the organization’s guiding light.

Kaprizov is a superstar and Top 15 talent himself. He’s also 28 and in the prime years of his career. The organization would be foolish to waste Kaprizov’s best years with anything less than a foot-on-the-pedal approach.

A nucleus of Kaprizov, Hughes, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, Joel Eriksson Ek, Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt is the starting point for being more than one-and-done in the postseason.

The risks associated with a blockbuster trade didn’t discourage Guerin’s ambition. Hughes is eligible for free agency after next season with no guarantees that he will re-sign. Fine, figure that out later.

Focus on what’s most important now: winning. And trust that a positive team atmosphere in a market that loves and appreciates hockey will create enough impact on Hughes that he will want to stay long term.

“If the hockey is not good, you won’t be happy,” he said. “That’s what really matters. If your job is good, you will be happy.”

Guerin’s conviction in his vision is admirable. Agree or disagree with his personnel decisions, nobody can say that he allows himself to become paralyzed by fear of the unknown.

Executives can talk themselves out of moves every day by focusing on the downside or potential criticism from the media and public.

Losing Buium especially is hard. He might turn into a star player. That first-round draft pick might too. Hughes ultimately might choose free agency. Nobody knows for sure.

Superstars and franchise-altering players don’t fall out of the sky though. Guerin’s willingness to take a big swing is precisely how teams should operate in these situations.

Guerin tied his own hands when he agreed to squeeze his salary cap flexibility with a boatload of dead money in the buyouts the past few seasons. He’s not confined to the penalty box any longer.

“It’s nice to be in the game,” he said.