Michael Russo joined Jesse Granger and Mark Lazerus on The Athletic Hockey Show to provide his latest reporting on the Minnesota Wild’s front office situation. Russo touched on the NHL’s investigation into Bill Guerin’s verbal abuse of a Wild staffer and his decision to dismiss Chris O’Hearn.
Below are the highlights from the interview.
The Wild are working on a separation agreement between Guerin and the staffer who alleged verbal abuse:
Right now, it looks like they're trying to come up with a separation agreement between the employee and Bill Guerin, the employee who went to HR with the alleged verbal abuse.
And not just the one incident, but a series of incidents over the years.
That negotiation is currently going on. Technically, the employee still works for the organization, but he's not on his first road trip in ten years, wasn't at work all week last week.
There were multiple incidences between Guerin and the employee, and the employee is currently working remotely:
This employee has multiple documentation of different incidences that have happened with him over the years that he felt created a hostile working environment for him, and the last straw came, I think it was November 24 against Colorado before the game. I think it was actually the day, the Saturday, that they flew to Detroit, where the incident happened, where Bill Guerin lost his temper and had an alleged outburst.
But he went to HR, the findings came back to Craig Leipold, (Wild CEO) Matt Majka, and their attorneys, and the decision was made in consult with the National Hockey League that Bill Guerin really didn't do anything that was a firable offense in their mind.
And right now, again, I would be very, very surprised if this employee came back to work. I know he's been working remotely. But it just doesn't seem tenable that he's gonna be able to do his job without having interactions with Bill Guerin.
Russo and The Athletic’s Joe Smith are still figuring out what happened with O’Hearn, but it was not an HR issue:
The mutual parting of ways of Chris O'Hearn, we are getting closer to figuring out exactly what this was. This was not really an HR issue by any stretch of the imagination. This was a wrongdoing that he allegedly made in doing his job and something that he fessed up to coincidentally during the discovery phase of the other investigation that was going on simultaneously.
And once that was fessed up to, essentially, a decision was made between the National Hockey League and the Minnesota Wild to let him go. It sounds like he just essentially made a mistake in something that he did, and again, we'll be able to report that closer [sic].
The Wild hired an outside firm to investigate Guerin’s alleged wrongdoings:
I think this was an HR issue. I think that the investigators that came in that was hired by the team, so that an internal investigation from an outside agency that then is reporting everything, the findings, to the team.
So I know cynics out there will take that for what it's worth.
And I think it was probably the same firm (as the Chicago Blackhawks used). But anyway, I know that they interviewed 15 people, and there was a lot of questions during those interviews if Bill Guerin has essentially ever done this to them, and as far as I understand, that has not been the case with any of the 15 that were interviewed.
Russo told Granger and Lazerus that he didn’t believe Guerin was ever in jeopardy of losing his job. Listen to the entire interview wherever you get your podcasts.
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