On Thursday, Bill Guerin made his first significant front-office addition since becoming the Wild’s general manager 10 1/2 months ago by bringing in the well-regarded Judd Brackett to oversee Minnesota’s amateur scouting department.
The 43-year-old Brackett comes to the Twin Cities fresh off a 12-year stint with the Vancouver Canucks, the past five as their director of amateur scouting during a span in which the team gobbled up such gems as Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes. After a very public and unusual breakup with the Canucks allowed him to become a “free agent” on July 1 despite never getting to work his final draft with the club, Brackett ended up unemployed barely a week and will hold the same title with the Wild.
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Back in early May, Guerin let go a couple longtime scouts, including Darren Yopyk, who co-ran the draft table last summer with P.J. Fenton. There had been rumblings throughout the National Hockey League ever since that Guerin intended to eventually hire an executive to direct the scouting department. Such names suddenly available included Brackett, Carolina’s Rick Dudley, Los Angeles’ Mike Futa and Buffalo’s Randy Sexton.
Originally, the NHL hoped to conduct the 2020 Draft in early June well before this summer’s resumption of the 2019-20 season. So after firing Yopyk, Guerin planned for assistant GM Tom Kurvers to oversee the draft operation with Fenton and director of European scouting Ricard Persson co-running the Wild’s remote draft table.
But with this summer’s draft now pushed until after the Stanley Cup Final and tentatively set for Oct. 6, Guerin contacted Brackett as soon as his contract expired June 30. It’s believed expansion Seattle was one other team in hot pursuit.
Persson will continue on as the Wild’s director of European scouting, while Fenton, the son of former Wild GM Paul Fenton, will remain with the club as an amateur scout, sources say.
The 34-year-old P.J. Fenton co-ran a 2019 draft that hit a number of talented players, including first-round pick Matt Boldy, second-round picks Hunter Jones and Vladislav Firstov and third-round pick Adam Beckman, the Western Hockey League’s leading scorer, goal scorer and Player of the Year.
Brackett (last suit on the right) was a big proponent of drafting Elias Pettersson fifth overall in 2017. Pettersson has 55 goals and 132 points in 139 NHL games. (David Banks / USA Today)
The hiring of Brackett in Minnesota comes ironically three weeks before the Wild will take on his old team and a number of players he’s responsible for drafting in a qualifying round to make the 2020 playoffs.
Brackett’s arrival in Minnesota will surely be big news in Vancouver because his departure there certainly made juicy headlines. All season long, it became clear that front-office friction grew between Brackett and Canucks GM Jim Benning.
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Benning revealed to the media that Brackett turned down a two-year contract offer from the Canucks and the two parties were never able to come to terms on a new deal.
In an unusual step that rarely happens for somebody in a director of amateur scouting role, the Canucks issued a press release and held a conference call in late May announcing that Brackett would be leaving the franchise once his contract expired June 30. A lot of staffers in the NHL who had expiring contracts on June 30 had their contracts effectively extended through the end of this hockey season or even the calendar year.
That would have been appropriate for somebody in Brackett’s position because one can assume he has a lot of propriety information as to the Canucks’ plans, likes and dislikes for the upcoming draft.
But instead, the two sides decided to part ways.
In late May, Brackett issued a statement saying “an agreement on the level of input going forward with regard to staff personnel and process could not be reached.”
Benning said, “I come from a scouting background, I believe in collaboration and the chain of command where the director of scouting either reports to the director of player personnel, the assistant GM or GM. I don’t know too many places where the teams are going to give the head scouting total autonomy without collaborating higher up the chain of command than he is.”
Brackett, married and a father of four, came up through a non-traditional path to become director of amateur scouting and developed a reputation as an innovative super-scout with impressive work ethic.
The Cape Cod native, who owns a couple restaurants in the area, is a former goaltender that coincidentally played for Guerin’s old junior team, though the two have no history together. Brackett played one year at Northeastern University and three for Connecticut College.
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He’d go on to write NHL prospect content and scouting reports for McKeen’s for a few years and began his scouting career with the Quebec League’s Gatineau Olympiques in 2005-06. While there, Gatineau won the Presidents Cup in 2008. Brackett would then become head scout and vice president of player personnel for the now-defunct Indiana Ice in the USHL. He captured two Clark Cups while with the team and concurrently began his NHL scouting career as an area scout for the Canucks responsible for the northeast and USHL.
Brackett served seven years as an amateur scout with the Canucks before being promoted to head honcho on the amateur side before the 2015-16 season.
The elevation came two months after Brackett reportedly pushed for the Canucks to draft eventual Calder Trophy finalist Brock Boeser (75 goals and 161 points in 197 NHL games) out of Burnsville in the first round and center Adam Gaudette in the fifth round. Gaudette, 23, went on to a terrific career at Northeastern University and is in his third season with the Canucks.
The respected Brackett has worked hard to help restock the cupboards in Vancouver. You can go through each of the drafts in the past five years and find a lot of high-end talent. But what likely also intrigued Guerin was Vancouver’s late-round success during Brackett’s tenure. It gave Vancouver a ton of surplus value either as players it could use or eventual trade assets.
As far as specific drafts, the 2019 draft could end up being a home run for the Canucks. They took uber-talented Vasily Podkolzin 10th overall, Nils Hoglander in the second round and Brackett really campaigned for seventh-round pick Aidan McDonough, who had a solid freshman year at Northeastern.
In 2018, the Canucks pilfered the Calder Trophy contending Hughes at seventh overall. Brackett also snagged another Northeastern product, Tyler Madden, in the third round. Madden is the son of former Wild center John Madden and played youth hockey in Edina. Tyler Madden was traded to the Kings in this season’s Tyler Toffoli trade.
But maybe the most impressive selection in the Brackett era was grabbing Pettersson fifth overall in 2017. Pettersson was not touted that high in the draft, but Brackett was a big proponent and the kid has emerged into a bona fide star up the middle for the Canucks. Vancouver also selected a number of other talented players in a draft class regarded as the organization’s best since the turn of the century.
Guerin will be looking for more of the same in Minnesota.
The Athletic’s Corey Pronman contributed to this story.
(Photo of Brackett, left, and Canucks brass with Vasily Podkolzin at the 2019 NHL Draft: Derek Cain / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Michael Russo is a senior writer covering the Minnesota Wild and the National Hockey League for The Athletic. He has covered the NHL since 1995 (Florida Panthers) and the Wild since 2005, previously for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Minneapolis Star Tribune. Michael is a four-time Minnesota Sportswriter of the Year and in 2017 was named the inaugural Red Fisher Award winner as best beat writer in the NHL. Michael can be seen on Bally Sports North and the NHL Network; and heard on KFAN (100.3 FM) and podcasts "Worst Seats in the House" (talknorth.com), "The Athletic Hockey Show" on Wednesdays and "Straight From the Source" (The Athletic). Follow Michael on Twitter @RussoHockey
