Wild GM Bill Guerin: Mats Zuccarello could miss start of 2025-26 season

The Minnesota Wild may be without one of their top offensive threats when the 2025-2026 season rolls around, as general manager Bill Guerin told reporters on Thursday that Mats Zuccarello had “something come up.”

“We’re still kind of looking at it but it could be something where he’s out for the start of the season,” Guerin told the media, according to a Tweet from NHL.com reporter Jessi Pierce.

Zuccarello did not participate in the first day of Wild training camp on Thursday, and based on Guerin’s assessment that he could miss the start of the season, it seems unlikely that he will return in a non-contact capacity in the immediate future.

The veteran forward from Norway is set to enter his seventh season in Minnesota after spending the first nine years of his career with the New York Rangers.

Zuccarello has remained very productive offensively into his late 30s, as he’s coming off a campaign that saw him put up 54 points in 69 regular season games. In the 2021-2022 season, Zuccarello scored a career-high 79 points.

The 38-year-old is not the only offensively-gifted winger in the organization making headlines, as Guerin also provided his perspective on the current state of negotiations between the club and superstar winger Kirill Kaprizov after reports surfaced that Kaprizov turned down an eight-year offer that would have come with an average annual value of $16 million and made him the highest-paid player in NHL history.

“These negotiations are private,” Guerin told reporters, including The Athletic‘s Michael Russo. “I can’t really get into it. Things are fine. The most important thing is that we want to sign Kirill. He’s our franchise player. We want to keep him here. He’s a big part of our team. We’re working towards that. We’re doing the best we can.”