The Minnesota Wild announced on Wednesday that the team and assistant general manager Chris O’Hearn have mutually agreed to part ways.
“This is obviously huge, out of the blue news,” said Michael Russo, who covers the Wild for The Athletic . “O’Hearn was (general manager) Bill Guerin’s right-hand man and AGM since 2019 and chief contract negotiator.”
Russo also reported that O’Hearn, 41, accompanied the Wild on their recent four-game road trip, showing no signs that he would be soon leaving the organization.
“Originally hired in the summer of 2019 by Paul Fenton to be director of hockey operations, O’Hearn was the Wild’s chief contract negotiator and expert on all transactional and collective bargaining agreement issues,” said Russo in his latest column for The Athletic.
The team hasn’t announced who will fill in for O’Hearn’s day-to-day tasks. Russo also wrote that it’s believed O’Hearn recently signed a new contract with the Wild.
It’s been a tumultuous 2023-24 campaign for Guerin and the Wild. After starting the season with a 5-10-4 record, the team announced they fired head coach Dean Evason in late November. Replacing him with John Hynes, the team has gone 5-2-0, most recently defeating the Seattle Kraken 3-0 last Sunday.
The Wild remain near the bottom of the Western Conference’s Central Division with 24 points and a 10-12-4 record. Their next game is Thursday night at home against the Calgary Flames, then two days later, they host another Canadian squad in the Vancouver Canucks for a Saturday matinee.
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