Ryan S. Kralkapur 15, 2025, 07:30 am at
Closeryan S. Clark is an NHL reporter for ESPN.
All of the Scouts across the NHL have a story about one outlook they saw for countless hours that they asked the organization to draft – just watch that player succeed elsewhere.
For Judd Brackett, his warning tale helped build what might be the NHL’s best farm system as part of a bigger plan to become the candidate for the next long-term Stanley Cup.
Before Brackett became director of Amateur Scout Wild, he was an amateur area scout. His life was about numerous long car rides that traverse hundreds of miles of boring and repetitive landscapes in return for finding potential customers who could reach the NHL.
One day, Brackett found one of those outlooks. He submitted reports on size, skills and two-way players who can skate and score goals. The crossover scouts have come to see the prospects, but only to see him having the worst game of the season. Bracket asked for another chance but was told to forget the player.
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Except that Brackett never forgot. It continues to bother him more than 15 years later for two reasons. The prospect was a round draft pick after winning the Stanley Cup along with the team that drafted him, and taught Brackett the value to make sure all scouts feel they’ve heard.
“I’m always trying to recognize whether I’m in a car, next week’s car, whether they’re not playing well, whether I’m calling scouts in the area or whether they don’t play well,” Brackett said. “I ask them, ‘Can you tell me what you like again?” If it’s just a bad game, it’s a one-off game.
When Wild named Bill Gehlin general manager in 2019, he believed he could bring the franchise to new heights. Wilde is in a position to reach the playoffs for the fifth time in Guerin’s six seasons, but the team had to manipulate the pay cap assignment.
The way they did it is to have young talent on team-friendly contracts that can be played straight away. That’s what makes Brackett and his staff so valuable to the wild. Brackett is not a frontal role, but the work he and his staff have done has been seen for years.
The first draft under Brackett, which started in the 2020-21 season, was Marco Rossi, who appeared in the top six centers. Kevin Fiala’s trade was organized by Bracket’s insight, as they won the franchise’s cornerstone defenseman at Block Faber and a first-round pick that became the promising outlook Liam Oaglen.
And there are the foundations that Brackett laid, and some big cap hits from the book, and they are in a position to make a big splash this offseason.
“Judd is important to what we’re doing,” Guerin said. “We can’t express how important he is to us, how great he has done for us, and what we can do in the way we run with our empty cap hits. That’s his staff, his department. He runs it.
The central division is undoubtedly the toughest of the NHL, especially among the top five teams.
Many of their division’s rivals chose to build through the draft. The Dallas star, the St. Louis Blues and the Winnipeg Jets each have more than 11 players drafted or signed as undrafted free agents. The Colorado Avalanche has five people on the current roster, but the 2022 Stanley Cup team was built around a homemade core with nine players with either drafted or undrafted free agents.
There are only three Wilds on their current roster. For now. However, the need to develop more talent from within further amplifies what makes the work by Brackett and his staff extremely important for wild short-term and long-term planning.
“I don’t know what he’s doing, but he does it,” joking Guerin. “He got it, he knows, and I trust him with all my heart. We’re developing camps, training camps, [free agency]even players who have been in the league for three or four years that we are considering due to trade deadlines, we go with Judd. I’ll go back to [the player’s] Draft year. What do we know about him? What do you know about his personality? He has all of that information. ”
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In keeping pace with the power of departments like AVS, Jets and Stars is only part of the equation when it comes to the wild. It should be something that should be hypothetically easy when July 1 arrives, and will gain the financial flexibility they lacked due to the acquisition of Zack Paris and Ryan Star.
The 2021 acquisition of Paris and Suter came nine years after they each signed a 13-year contract worth $98 million in 2012. A year later, the NHL and the NHL Players Association reached terms on a new collective bargaining agreement that would limit the maximum contract length to eight years.
If they remained in Wild, these deals will come out of the book this season and beyond. The initial acquisition saved more than $10 million at once, which all teams were even more financially aware of due to a flat salary cap. However, the second year of the acquisition combined $4.7 million in cap space in the first year to $12.743 billion for the second season. Years 3 and 4 increased to $14.743 billion in cap space.
This meant Wild had to find talent on team-friendly contracts that could help them with the lineup.
Enter his staff from the 2020 NHL Draft, Brackett, his staff and how their hauling benefitsed the wild in multiple ways.
They used Rossi’s first round, which appeared in top six centers in the past two seasons
Their second round pick, Marat Kusnuddinov, played 57 games this season in the sixth role this season before he was traded before Justin Blazo.
Defensive man Demon Hunt, drafted in the third round, was part of the deal early in the season to acquire prospect defenseman David Girisek, who was the sixth overall pick in 2022.
Guerin said Brackett was “very involved” in the Jirisek trade, just like the Fiara trade with King Los Angeles in 2022. Faber, runner-up in the Calder Trophy in 2023-24, became Wild’s top pairing defenseman, with Oglen playing 24 games this season.
Between Faber, Khusnutdinov, Ohgren and Rossi, they were the quartets who played at a collective cost of $3.6 million to coincide with the game being played in 227 games this season.
Brockfaber has taken over Minnesota’s number one defensive man and is pulling out an entry-level contract. David Berding/Getty Images
The Wild can have another prospect that will play a pivotal role for them in the Zeev Buium playoffs. The University of Denver defenseman was part of the wild draft class, which won an A grade from ESPN’s Rachel Drelly, and Guerin moved one draft spot to No. 12, allowing the wild to choose him. He signed an entry-level contract on Sunday and began practicing with the team on Monday.
Hobey Baker finalist Buium scored 11 goals and 50 points as a freshman in 2023-24. This was the top of all defenders – Denver helped win the NCAA-Record 10th Men’s National Championship. He also won gold twice in the US at the World Junior Championships. Buiuum scored again in 2024-25, leading the NCAA defensive man and was a Hobby Baker Award finalist as a top player in college hockey.
Brackett said that whether it’s an NHL player or swapping draft topics, all trading scenarios present multiple options for the team to discuss. He said it’s difficult to focus on one player as other teams might say no. So it’s important that staff have someone to talk about all the potential outlooks that are on track, even if they don’t.
“It usually starts with a momentary notification,” Brackett said. “Most transactions take a little time, but the framework may be there soon, and there is usually some ongoing debate, so there is time to dig a little deeper.
“But you know you have to prepare. You know that you can call from an assistant GM or someone, whether it’s an invoice. They want to know about the player.
Brackett has a warning story, but he also has a success story about a player who made him believe he would one day become a scout.
The player was Marty reasoner. Brackett was a high school goalkeeper in Massachusetts, then played in Northeastern and later at the University of Connecticut. He was his first pick in 1996, facing off against reasoners who played nearly 800 NHL games. Faced with reasoning at the time, he appreciated what he had become very good at.
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Brackett said that looking at the traits of the reasoner, along with his talent, such as his vision and selflessness, gave him a reference point when it comes to valuing players. That’s what he took with him when he began working for nearly three seasons as a scout for the Gatineau Olympics for the QMJHL. Gatineau won the Presidential Cup in his final season.
Brackett was then hired by USHL’s Indiana Ice as head scouts and vice president of player rep, helping the franchise win two Clark Cups. He drafted or signed 34 future NHL players on the ice before being hired by the Canucks in 2008.
He was an amateur region scout for seven seasons before being promoted to Director of Amateur Souting in 2015. Brackett played a role in the Canucks, drafting future corner tones such as Brock Boser, Quin Hughes and Elia Spetterson before leaving the club to join the wild in 2020.
“Bill and I had no previous relationships before we came to Minnesota,” Brackett said. “We are going to do it in a very honest way from an evaluation perspective. We try to be unfair when we are making these decisions and recommendations.”
His work was particularly important in the acquisition of Director Paris, the most expensive. I am blessed with hope. The acquisition will cost $1.6 million per year over the next three years, and Packpedia will have $21.8 million in cap space this offseason.
The team has five unrestricted, unrestricted free agents, including Marcus Johansson, Gustav Nyquist, Brazzo, John Merrill and Mark Andre Fleury, but the restricted free agent Rossi also needs a new contract. Most of the core has been signed for at least one season before star forward Kiril Kaprizov became a free agent from 2025-26 onwards.
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When they re-sign Rossi, it leaves Guerin with more cap space to deal with the roster than he’s had in recent years. However, he can further maximize that space by utilizing the farm system, which has been enhanced by Brackett and his staff.
“To be honest, it’s a luxury with guys like Judd,” Guerin said. “I trust him with all my heart. I know I’ll get a player with the chance. Even when I was signing David Zilisek’s contract, Judd first raised his hand and said, “Don’t worry about this year’s pick.”
“It’s a belief in what you know a guy is confident and what he’s doing.”
