Q&A: Bill Guerin and his family on life in the NHL and becoming the Wild GM

The safest time to book a vacation as an NHL beat writer is in August.

Typically, the NHL and its general managers take a long siesta this month, so the writers usually do, too.

But the second thought I had last month when Paul Fenton lost his job as Wild general manager was I sure picked the world’s worst time to book a trip to Cabo.

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Doing the math, I knew there was a very good chance I’d be down there when the Wild hired a new GM and I’d be in jeopardy of missing his press conference.

Sure enough, The Athletic broke the Bill Guerin news from Cabo on Wednesday and I indeed missed Guerin’s presser as I commuted back from Mexico through L.A. the following day.

But as absolutely swamped as he must be right now, on Friday morning, Guerin carved time out in his busy schedule to sit down for a couple cups of coffee and a Q&A inside the St. Paul Grill at the St. Paul Hotel.

What turned out to be an informative interview about the Wild would soon turn into a fun, impromptu yuck-it-up fest with Guerin’s family.

Guerin’s wife of 23 years, Kara, joined us in the restaurant along with three of their four kids: 22-year-old Kayla, who will be getting her master’s at Durham University in England, where she will be playing lacrosse; 18-year-old Liam, who will be playing hockey this fall and winter at Salisbury School in Connecticut; and 16-year-old Lexi, who will be playing soccer and lacrosse this year at Westminster School in Connecticut.

Grace, 20, who plays lacrosse at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, had just left that morning for school.

Guerin’s kids were already wearing Wild attire, Guerin already thumbing his Wild keycard.

The fun sitdown with Guerin’s family was the perfect combination of hilarious and touching, so much so that Guerin texted me the next day saying that hearing the things his kids said about him “made me feel like I did something right.”

Here is Part 1 of a two-part Q&A with Guerin. On Thursday, you can read more of Guerin’s thoughts on becoming the Wild’s fourth full-time GM.

What was that call like when (owner) Craig Leipold broke to you that you got the job?

Bill Guerin: It was great.

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Kara Guerin: Well, we were waiting for the call to come in and Grace, Billy and I were all in his office at home on pins and needles sitting there. Craig called and it was clear he got it, but we were supposed to be quiet. So Grace and I were jumping up and down hugging each other trying not to be loud.

Bill: It was just a whirlwind. He just called and goes, “How are you doing?” I said, “I don’t know, I’ll let you know in a minute.” He started laughing and said, “Well, Billy, congratulations, I want to offer you the job as general manager for the Minnesota Wild.” And I quietly gave one giant fist pump. … Craig texted me around noon Tuesday asking if I’d be available for a call around 3:30. So I had to wait 3 ½ hours. I went to lunch with the guys in the office in Pittsburgh and they said, “What do you think?” I said, “I don’t know, I’m hoping it’s good. But maybe it’s not.” I told Kara and Grace as we waited, I said, “I’m more nervous now than I was for Game 7 in Detroit in ‘09.” I was a wreck.

Kara: We’re just sitting there waiting and everything is going through your head, you’re thinking he probably wouldn’t set up a time to call if it was bad news, but maybe he did, maybe he’s just being respectful. Everything is going through your head.

Bill: The easy part of this process were the two interviews. The waiting was the worst part. It was brutal. But it was all worth it. Amazing experience and opportunity, and I’m just really excited to get going.

How did you and Kara meet?

Bill: A mutual friend in New Jersey introduced us. Kara was in college and she bartended at a local neighborhood bar. It was a great spot that we used to always go to. You had been working there a while and I’d just never seen her, I’d never met her. Our buddy owned the place and he introduced us.

Kara: But not there, which was funny.

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Bill: Yeah, not there, you’re right! That’s kinda weird. … But, when we met, she fell head over heels.

Kara: (sarcastically) Can you blame me? He kind of stalked me for a long time.

Bill: We didn’t have texting back then, so I stalked her by mail.

Kara: Yeah, you would write. You’d write and write a lot.

Kara, you’ve been with Bill basically since the beginning. What’s it like being married to a player versus somebody in management?

Kara: Trade deadline (as a player), no matter how good the season is going, you’re always nervous. There have been a couple of unexpected trades along the way. So I feel like you never completely feel safe. Even if you should be, even if stats and everything say you should be, you don’t really feel that way. In the beginning, when Billy first was doing player development, the biggest change for me that I thought was the hardest … for so many years, we’d get the schedule at the beginning of the year and I could say, “March 7, you’re going to be in so-and-so (city),” or whatever, and we could figure it out. And then player development, we couldn’t plan. I had no idea who he needed to see or when he needed to be there. He had a little more control over schedules, so he could try to plan around kids’ birthdays or something like that, but …

Bill: And we had summers off as a player.

Kara: That’s right, as soon as the season ended, you were done and you didn’t have to go back until the season was starting. So summers were summers. Now, there’s no summers and some unknown. I think because we have four kids and they’re all busy and playing multiple sports and are running around, scheduling is a really important thing to me. And the not being able to schedule was difficult.

Bill: I always say Kara could run a Fortune 500 company the way she schedules our lives. It’s unbelievable how with four kids she has always been able to blueprint out who needs to be where and when, and how we’re going to get it done. It’s pretty remarkable.

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So, with all four kids out of the house, this probably isn’t completely overwhelming for you two to have to move right before the season?

Kara: It’s funny, I have really mixed feelings. Lexi and I were sitting together this morning talking about it. The thing that makes me the saddest right now is this will be my first move I’m doing without kids. I’ve never left my kids behind. It’s not even just me having to meet new people. We’re fortunate, we’re really close as a family, I would say. I don’t know, even though our kids don’t live at home now, it’s just weird to be moving to another state without them. It’s a little sad.

Bill: Yeah, that’ll be hard on both of us.

Kara: It’s funny, because we were saying every other move we had to get (to this specific team and city) and right away. We would move within 10 days and get into a school. This year, I need to stay home and focus on getting them into school before I come here, so it’s a little different. I was just saying, I don’t even know where we’re going to live. If we’ll rent an apartment or buy a house. It’s very different this time. We’ll have to live in an apartment for a little while. We haven’t even thought about selling a house or anything yet. Right now, it’s just been crazy.

Where do you guys live in New Jersey?

Bill: We have our summer place in Ocean City, New Jersey.

So, is that pretty much like Jersey Shore?

Bill: No, it’s not like the TV show.

Kara: No, please don’t think that.

Liam Guerin: Wellllll, when they’re gone it is.

Kara: That’s very true, considering Liam had a bit of a party at our house the other night.

Bill: Which was great. … It’s actually kind of like our happy place. We love it down there, it’s just awesome. We’ve been there all summer.

How does Liam compare to you, Bill, as a player in terms of style?

Bill: Very similar. I mean, he’s bigger than I am (6-foot-4 compared to 6-foot-2).

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Right shot? Can take you wide? Go to net, slam-dunk goals? Maybe you should sign him.

Bill: Yup. Right shot. Right wing.

Liam: In the box a lot.

Bill: He struggles in the looks department, I don’t. … No, he’s very similar. We’re very similar in personality, too.

Kara: They are the same person.

Bill: Yeah, there will be a comment made and the running joke in the family is that we share a brain. If there’s a silly comment made, it’s like “Who’s using the brain right now?” It goes back and forth.

Are your daughters more like you, Kara?

Kayla Guerin: We’re a mix, I would say.

Kara: Yeah, they’re all a mix. I’m trying to think, I think you guys are pretty even.

Bill: The kids all know how to work hard … and they really know how to have fun.

What was it like watching Bill as a player?

Liam: I loved when he got hit, that was my favorite part of the game. But, I don’t know, I always kind of looked up to him. I only really remember the later parts of his career, like later on the Islanders and the Penguins. So I always kind of saw him as like an older guy. Like, not really the young star anymore. His net-front plays were always kind of what I noticed the most about him. So I always modeled a lot of my game after that, I feel like. It was exciting whenever you’d see Sid (Crosby) do all the dirty work and then he’d just tap it in. And I’d be like, “Yeah, that’s my dad! Sid’s getting his paycheck for him!” So that’s kind of how I remember it.

Bill: Thanks?

Matt Cullen’s kids are like that. They just ripped on him all the time. Like, if Cullen scored two goals in a game but he hit a post or missed a wide-open net, they’d just give him shit. Was that the same way with your kids?

Bill: Oh yeah, all … the … time. It keeps you grounded. It’s good.

Kayla: I feel we were more supportive. All the kids play travel sports and stuff and our parents are not the type of parents that push us or anything, it all comes from within. So, they didn’t critique us, and I would have been furious if you guys did, so we weren’t going to critique him. We were more supportive. Because you have coaches and stuff to critique you.

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Lexi Guerin: I don’t think anyone really critiqued him ever, I just think we always just went to his games just to show our support. I think that was maybe it.

Well, actually I do remember in 2009, didn’t Liam become almost famous after you were traded to Pittsburgh by always holding that sign that read something like, “My dad rocks!”

Liam: Yup. That was me.

Bill: When they were really young, you know, dad was traveling all the time, they missed me. So there was one year, Kara … well, you tell the story.

Kara: I can’t even remember what team we were with.

Bill: I think Dallas.

Kara: I think it was Dallas. So obviously, again Billy traveled all the time. And he was just Dad, they didn’t want him to travel all the time, they didn’t care that he was playing. They didn’t quite yet get the concept of how important it was. And Dallas lost in the playoffs, and I said, “Guys, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is Dallas lost,” and right away they just start cheering because they knew the good news was it meant that he’d get to come home and they were so excited!

Liam: That’s hilarious.

Kara: Yeah, they were like, “Yeah, we lost!” That’s not really how that’s supposed to go, but they were all happy.

Bill: They were all super young then, but we’ve always just all supported each other. You know what? We make sacrifices all the time … just for each other.

What are stories nobody knows about your dad?

Liam: That he’s a little kid. Like we said, I just had friends over and they were all dying laughing the whole time because every time he would leave the room they would be like, “He does this little run whenever he does something he shouldn’t do!” He like, waves his arms and runs away out of the room.

Kara: Wait, what?

Liam: You know that little guilty run he does? … You know that, Kayla, right?

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Kayla: He does it sometimes. Our new family joke is he has so much love and so much strength. So, we’ll walk into the house and right away he’ll give us the biggest hug, but he forgets how strong he is.

Liam: It hurts.

Kayla: So he’s like, suffocating us, he’s hugging us so much. And in the mornings we’re all grumpy but he’s wide awake, super silly, singing to us, playing games.

Kara: That’s how the kids are like me, we are not morning people. Billy is. … He’ll come in the room singing. One month Lexi and Billy had this thing where they had to speak in a different accent every morning. For a whole month, a different country. And her sister’s room is right next to hers, her sister Grace. And Grace would get so mad.

OK, so Kayla will be in England, Grace will be at college in Pennsylvania, Liam and Lexi boarding school in Connecticut. How tough will it be to watch Bill from afar? You all saw him as a player, but have pretty much lived with him the last eight or nine years. Will it be a different type of excitement watching the Wild?

Liam: I think we’ve gotten used to seeing him on the other side with the Penguins now. It was weird at first because you’re used to seeing him on the ice.

Kara: Except for me it was funny, and I don’t know if you guys felt the same. When Billy was a player, I felt like I watched more the player than the team. So I could tell you everything he had done during a game. And then when he retired, I had to get used to watching an entire team as opposed to a specific player. So that was different. But I think the good or bad, however you want to look at it, is that we’ve moved a lot and been a part of different teams so I think we’re really good at rooting for the new team.

Liam: Yeah, like we’re all Wild fans already.

Kara: It is funny how quickly it happens. Like you said, we’ve got the gear, we’re actually going to go back to the store and buy some more stuff for some friends today.

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Bill: Just jump in with two feet.

Do you guys find yourselves studying the roster? Will there be a lot of advice for Bill?

Kara: You know what, I was really superstitious this time around, so I didn’t look at anything until he had the job because, I don’t know, I was goofy about it. I refused to look at houses. … We hit some travel difficulties the past couple days. My daughter, Gracie and I were sitting in the airport going over the roster the other day.

I heard during the presser that the entire family had travel nightmares and a few of you almost missed Thursday’s press conference. What were the travel issues?

Kara: How long do you have?

Bill: Liam and Kayla were in New Jersey. It’s about a six-hour drive to our house in Pittsburgh. They cleaned our Ocean City house up …

Kara: Closed it down for the season, just the two of them for us.

Bill: Got in the car, drove the six hours back to Pittsburgh, dropped their stuff off, … packed a bag, went to the airport, caught a flight and then got here about 10 o’clock Wednesday. That was the smooth one.

Lexi: So I came from, Edinburgh, Scotland, where I was with my Westminster soccer team. We decided the night before …

Kara: Well, and I will say, at 16, completely by herself, left her group, got in a cab, and got herself …

Bill: To Glasgow.

Lexi: I drove 40 minutes to the Glasgow airport, flew from Glasgow to JFK. I was supposed to leave JFK around 7, but got delayed until 11:45 at night. And then I flew into Minneapolis-St. Paul and got here around 2 in the morning, almost 3. So, it was crazy.

Kara: And then, after their whole crazy day, (Liam and Kayla) went back and picked her up at the airport. So they were then at the airport at 2 in the morning because Grace and I were still in Pittsburgh. We packed a car, drove five hours to Lafayette College where she goes to school, cleaned her dorm room, moved her into school, got her room completely ready. And then drove from there to the Newark airport where we got delayed, delayed, delayed, canceled. So we spent the night in a hotel in Paramus, New Jersey, and then caught a flight (Thursday) morning and then got here half an hour before the press conference.

So you barely made it?

Kara: Yeah, and then poor Grace had to fly back (Thursday night) to school, so after being delayed, spending a night in NJ and arriving the day of the press conference, then she got to the Minneapolis airport (Thursday) night and her flight got delayed, delayed, delayed, canceled. So, she had to come back to the hotel after being at the airport for six hours again (Thursday) and she flew out (Friday) morning.

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Liam: I had a great trip. I really enjoyed it.

Bill: I’m just so thankful they made it to the press conference. It was a big moment for our family and it would have been an empty feeling if they weren’t there. … I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Honestly, it was amazing.

Kara: I have to say something, too, about Billy. We’ve told the kids, I hope, a million times how much we appreciate everything they did to get here, but I’ll say, you do a lot of great things as well to try to get to the kids’ games in sports. Billy will try to plan catching an NHL game or an AHL game around the kids. I remember there was one game, Kayla and Grace had a lacrosse game at Lafayette and the Pens had a playoff game in DC, so you drove to their game quickly and then back to the Pens game. I forget who said it, but I think we all just really try to support each other, and I don’t know if that comes from moving so much and feeling more of a group and having each other’s back. But I think we all do make the sacrifices we can to always get to each others’ games or anything.

Bill: Support each other.

Kayla: We’ve also been really lucky as his kids because a lot of people, looking on the outside, they see his travel schedule and they think, “Oh, he’s never at your games, he misses birthdays.” But, to be honest, we’ve never had that. He’s been the type of dad that he will wake up at 4 a.m. to see us off to school in the morning and do everything. He’s always been a big part of our lives, so he really hasn’t missed anything.

Liam: He hasn’t missed anything, really.

Kayla: He’s been at every big event, I don’t know if he’s missed one. So we’ve been lucky.

Bill: Mike, I’m going to need a copy of this audio, please.

Lexi: I know, we’re being so nice.

Liam: You’re never hearing it again.

Bill: I know something is coming.

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Kara: Wait ‘til we get in the car.

That will be probably the hardest part of this job. Living in the Midwest and trying to arrange all that.

Bill: Yeah, it’s always tough. It’s always tough, but there’s always a way. Family is the most important thing and you have to carve out time for it. To be honest with you, we all do it. I expect everybody on our staff to do it. You have to make time for your family. You have to.

It’s very clear your family loves you and how tight you guys are, Bill. How do you stay grounded?

Bill: Do you really want to know how I stay grounded? So the other day, was it yesterday?

Liam: Two days ago.

Bill: Two days ago, I was talking to Kara. She was driving in the car, so I’m on speakerphone, and Gracie’s in the car. And I said, “Hey, you guys, guess who’s throwing out the first pitch at the Twins game Friday?” And there was a pause, and Grace goes, “Hannah Brown?” And I’m like, “Who’s Hannah Brown?” She goes, “The Bachelorette!” I’m like, “No! Me!” God!

Kara: And then I said to her, “Is she from Minnesota? What made you think that?” She said, “No, I just thought about who I’d be excited to see.”

We Guerin-tee that Bill threw a strike ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/c3QgHz8ZWa

— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) August 24, 2019

Kara: So, we do keep him grounded, that’s for sure.

Liam: We don’t let him get too big a head.

How’s your pitch? How do you throw it?

Bill: We’ll see. I played baseball as a kid, but we’ll see. When we won (the Cup) in ‘09, I threw it out at the Pirates game. Sid didn’t want to do it, so I had a little help from Liam. He came out to the mound with me.

Liam: I just whispered in his ear, “Don’t screw up or else you’ll be the laughingstock.”

Bill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was so funny, right before I went out, (former Penguins forward) Matt Cooke said, “You’ve got to aim high.” And it’s Cookie, and I’m like, “He’s pulling my leg. He’s just messing with me.” But he was telling me the truth because you’re so high up on the mound. I think it had some pretty good heat on it. But I skipped it right before the plate, so I’ll try to improve on that. I played baseball as a kid and I pitched, and I was pretty wild. I missed a few backstops. I hit a few guys. So I’ll try to improve on all that and not be a laughingstock before the Twins game.

(Top photo of the Guerin family celebrating Pittsburgh’s 2016 Stanley Cup win: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

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