NHL Announces General Manager Of The Year Finalists

The Wild’s Bill Guerin, the Avalanche’s Chris MacFarland, and the Ducks’ Pat Verbeek are the three finalists for this year’s Jim Gregory General Manager of the Year Award, the league announced today.

The award is presented annually “to the general manager who best excelled at his role during the regular season.” It is voted on by the League’s general managers and, per the league, “a panel of NHL executives and print and broadcast media” after the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs concludes.

This is the first time all three names have surfaced as finalists for the award. Of the three, Guerin is the longest-tenured lead executive. He was hired in 2019 to lead the Wild, and has guided the team to the playoffs in five of his seven campaigns in charge of the team. His Wild went 46-24-12 this season, good for third place in the Western Conference.

Guerin pulled off what most would likely consider this past season’s boldest transaction, putting together a package of players, prospects, and draft picks strong enough to land Quinn Hughes from the Vancouver Canucks. The move gave the Wild one of the game’s best players and arguably the game’s top defenseman.

He also secured the signature of franchise face Kirill Kaprizov on a massive contract extension, ensuring his team’s centerpiece player would not be departing in free agency. Kaprizov’s signing and the trade for Hughes represent two of the most consequential transactions in franchise history.

While Minnesota were pushed to the brink of elimination by the Avalanche last night, their loss should not diminish what Guerin accomplished this season – and that’s not even including his work constructing America’s roster for the Winter Olympics in Italy, work that resulted in a gold medal. He’s built the Wild into one of the NHL’s strongest teams, and his status as a finalist is a reflection of the strength of his body of work in 2025-26.

Verbeek, who like Guerin is a former longtime NHLer, has been running the Ducks’ hockey operations since February 2022. As GM in Anaheim, Verbeek has engineered a youth movement that is the envy of the NHL, securing high-end young pieces such as Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, and Beckett Sennecke.

But Verbeek hasn’t just stockpiled young talent. It’s his work to supplement his burgeoning young core with strong veteran contributors that has likely landed him as a finalist – and what has helped propel Anaheim to the second round of the playoffs.

Many rebuilding teams end up playing as many young players as possible, and the quality of the team overall suffers. The Ducks have taken a different approach, fusing a high number of young players with significant investments in veteran leaders. The result has been strong player development outcomes across the board, and the elevation of the Ducks into a winning, playoff-caliber team.

Verbeek signed Mikael Granlund and Alex Killorn as free agents, and landed Chris Kreider, Jacob Trouba, and most recently John Carlson via trade. Those additions, combined with the offseason hire of three-time Stanley Cup champion head coach Joel Quenneville, have supercharged the Ducks’ rebuild and pushed them back to contention at a quick pace.

Of the three finalists, MacFarland has been GM for the shortest period of time, though his tenure in Colorado overall actually stretches back more than a decade. Joe Sakic’s longtime assistant GM took the reins in 2022, and has since helped turn the Avalanche into a Presidents’ Trophy winner.

MacFarland’s bold decision to move on from star forward Mikko Rantanen, who was inching closer to unrestricted free agency, appears to have paid off. His direct replacement Martin Necas had an 100-point season and is now signed through 2033-34. MacFarland was also able to retain veteran pivot Brock Nelson, who ended up a Selke Trophy finalist in his first full campaign in Denver.

MacFarland has been able to find diamonds in the rough, such as Sam Malinski and Parker Kelly to support a contending team with fewer available draft picks thanks to trades designed to secure veteran talent.

The work of MacFarland and his staff has Colorado in a position to potentially win its second Stanley Cup of the 2020s, and that’s why he’s a finalist for GM of the year.

Photos courtesy of Nick Wosika-Imagn Images