Minnesota Wild

The Minnesota Wild is a ice-hockey team in the National Hockey League (NHL). The team is based in St. Paul, Minnesota playing their home-games at the Xcel Energy Center. The current coach of the Wild is Dean Evason, the current captain of the team is Jared Spurgeon (Number 46). This is the first and only NHL team in Minnesota after the Minnesota North Stars relocated to Dallas, Texas and became the Dallas Stars in 1993.

## History

After the 1993 relocation of the Minnesota North Stars to Dallas, Texas, the mayor of St. Paul at the time, Norm Coleman started a campaign to relocate an existing NHL team or to make a completely new NHL team. He was close to a new Minnesota NHL team in the mid-1990s as Minnesota interests had bought the original Winnipeg Jets as a plan to relocate that team to Minnesota, but arena negotiations fell and the Jets ended up being relocated to Phoenix, Arizona and became the Phoenix Coyotes, which would become the Arizona Coyotes in 2014.

A little while after the failed attempt to relocate the Jets to Minnesota, the NHL had announced that they were expanding from 26 to 30 teams to start play in the 2000-01 season. Minnesota businessman, Bob Naegele Jr. became a lead investor for an NHL expansion team and to become the first majority owner of a new NHL team. On June 25, 1997, the NHL awarded Minnesota with a new expansion team, but there were six names that could have been chosen for the team, the Blue Ox, the Freeze, the Northern Lights, the Voyageurs, the White Bears, or the **Wild**. Jac Sperling was named the chief execute officer of the team, Doug Risebrough was named general manager of the team, Tod Leiweke was named president of the team, and Martha Fuller was named chief financial officer of the team.

The Wild became the official name for the new Minnesota team, as it was unveiled at the Aldrich Arena in Maplewood, Minnesota on January 22, 1998. In April 1998, the State of Minnesota adopted legislation to loan the City of St. Paul about $65,000,000 out of the $130,000,000 it would cost to build the Xcel Energy Center, the Wild's home arena. The City of St. Paul issued an additional $65,000,000 from state taxes and scheduled rent. So, with the deconstruction of the St. Paul Civic Center, the Xcel Energy Center started build. There was a groundbreaking ceremony held in St. Paul after the Xcel Energy Center's completion. Doug Risebrough was then named the executive vice president and general manager for the Minnesota Wild.

Jacques Lamaire was named the Wild's first head-coach and the team picked Marián Gáborík in the first round NHL draft. On the Wild's debut game against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim (now simply the Anaheim Ducks) on October 6, 2000, Gáborík scored the first ever goal for the team. On October 11, 2000, the Wild had their very first home-game against the Philadelphia Flyers and Darby Hendrickson scored the Wild's first ever home-game goal. The most notable game for the Wild in that season was their first game against the Dallas Stars, because the Stars used to be the Minnesota North Stars before 1993. Scott Pellerin was the Wild's highest goal-scorer by the end of the 2000-01 season.

Marián Gáborík would break the record of the highest scoring rookie in Minnesota Wild history until April 21, 2021 when Kirill Kaprizov had officially beat his record.

## Rotating Captains

The Minnesota Wild rotated team captains from time-to-time until 2009.

## Permanent Captains

In 2009, the Minnesota Wild named their first permanent team captain.

 Jared Spurgeon