Scouts throughout the NHL all have a story about the one prospect they watched for countless hours that they begged their organization to draft — only to watch that player become a success elsewhere.

For Judd Brackett, his cautionary tale of what could have been has helped the Minnesota Wild build what might be the NHL’s best farm system as part of a larger plan to become the next long-term Stanley Cup contender.

Before Brackett was the Wild’s director of amateur scouting, he was an amateur regional scout. His life was about those numerous long car rides through hundreds of miles of dreary and repetitive landscapes, with the payoff in finding a prospect who could possibly reach the NHL.

One day, Brackett found one of those prospects. He filed reports about a two-way player who had size, skill, could skate and score goals. A crossover scout came to watch the prospect, only to see him have his worst game of the season. Brackett pushed for another chance, but was told to forget about the player.

Except Brackett didn’t forget. It still haunts him more than 15 years later for two reasons: the prospect was a later-round draft pick who won a Stanley Cup with the team that drafted him, and it taught Brackett the value in making sure that every scout feels heard, a concept he continues to uphold in his current role.

“I always try to be cognizant that even if I see a guy and they didn’t play well, whether it’s in the car ride home or next week, I am calling the scout in the area,” Brackett said. “I ask them, ‘Tell me again what you like?’ If it was just a bad game, it’s a one-off. If I’ve got a scout who really believes in a player and I didn’t see it, I still have to find the right place for that guy.”

When the Wild named Bill Guerin their general manager in 2019, it came with the belief that he could lead the franchise to new heights. The Wild are in position to reach the playoffs for the fifth time in Guerin’s six seasons, but have had to maneuver around salary cap challenges.

How they’ve done that is having young talent on team-friendly contracts who could play right away. That’s what makes Brackett and his staff so valuable to the Wild. Even though Bracket is not in a front-facing role, the work he and his staff have done has been visible for years.

Their first draft pick under Brackett, who started in the 2020-21 season, was Marco Rossi, who has emerged into a top-six center. The Kevin Fiala trade — which led to them getting a franchise cornerstone defenseman in Brock Faber along with a first-round pick that became promising prospect forward Liam Ohgren — was orchestrated with Brackett’s insights.

And with the foundation that Brackett has laid — and some big cap hits coming off the books — they are in position to make a bigger splash this offseason.

“Judd’s critical to what we’re doing,” Guerin said. “I cannot express how important he is to us and how great of a job he has done for us and what it’s allowed us to do with how to operate with our empty cap hits. It’s his staff, his department; he runs it, draft day is his, and he’s a very smart guy and good leader.”

THE CENTRAL DIVISION is arguably the NHL’s toughest, particularly among the top five teams.

Many of their division rivals have chosen to build through the draft. The Dallas Stars, St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets each have more than 11 players that they drafted or signed as undrafted free agents. The Colorado Avalanche have five on their current roster, but their 2022 Stanley Cup team was built around a homegrown core that had nine players who were drafted or undrafted free agents.

The Wild have only three on their current roster — for now. But the need to develop more talent from within further amplifies what makes the work done by Brackett and his staff so crucial to the Wild’s short- and long-term plans.

“I don’t know what he does, but he does it,” Guerin joked. “He gets it, and he knows and I trust him wholeheartedly. We have Judd with us for development camp, for training camp, for [free agency], for the trade deadline, because even players that have been in the league for three or four years that we’re considering, we go with Judd. We go back to [the player’s] draft year. What do we know about him? What do we know about his character? He has all that information.”

Keeping pace with division powers like the Avs, Jets and Stars is only part of the equation when it comes to the Wild. It’s something that should become hypothetically easier once July 1 arrives and the Wild attain the financial flexibility they’d been missing because of the combined Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts.

The Parise and Suter buyouts in 2021 were nine years after they each signed identical 13-year contracts worth $98 million back in 2012. A year later, the NHL and the NHL Players Association came to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement limiting the maximum contract length to eight years.

If they had remained with the Wild, those contracts would be coming off the books after this season. The first of the buyouts saved the Wild more than $10 million at a time in which every team was even more financially conscious because of the flat salary cap. However, the second year of the buyouts went from costing the Wild a combined $4.7 million cap space in the first year to $12.743 million in the second season. The third and fourth years increased to $14.743 million in cap space.

This meant the Wild needed to find talent with team-friendly contracts who could contribute to their lineup.

ENTER BRACKETT, his staff and how their haul from the 2020 NHL draft has benefitted the Wild in multiple ways.

• They used their first-rounder on Rossi, who has emerged into a top-six center the last two seasons

• Their second-round pick, Marat Khusnutdinov, played 57 games in a bottom-six role this season before he was traded for forward Justin Brazeau

• Defenseman Daemon Hunt, who was drafted in the third round, was part of a trade earlier in the season to get prospect defenseman David Jiricek, who was the sixth overall pick in 2022.

Guerin said Brackett was “extremely involved” with the Jiricek trade, just like he was with the Fiala trade with the Los Angeles Kings in 2022. Faber, who was runner-up for the Calder Trophy in 2023-24, has become the Wild’s top-pairing defenseman, while Ohgren played in 24 games this season.

Between Faber, Khusnutdinov, Ohgren and Rossi, it was a quartet that combined to play in 227 games this season, at a collective cost of $3.6 million.

The Wild could have another prospect who plays a pivotal role for them in the playoffs in Zeev Buium. The University of Denver defenseman was part of a Wild draft class that earned an A grade from ESPN’s Rachel Doerrie, and Guerin moved up one draft spot to No. 12 to ensure the Wild could select him. He signed his entry-level contract on Sunday, and began practicing with the team on Monday.

Buium, a Hobey Baker finalist, scored 11 goals and 50 points as a freshman in 2023-24 — tops among all defensemen — as he helped Denver win its NCAA-record 10th men’s national championship. He also won gold twice with the United States at the World Junior Championships. Buium led NCAA defenseman in scoring again in 2024-25, and was a finalist for the Hobey Baker award as college hockey’s top player.

Brackett said every trade scenario — whether for an NHL player, or swapping draft picks — presents multiple options for a team to discuss. He said that it’s difficult to concentrate on one player, because the other team might say no; that makes it important to have someone on staff who can speak about most, if not, all the potential prospects in play going each way.

“It usually starts at a moment’s notice,” Brackett said. “Most trades take some time, but the framework might be right there. There’s usually some ongoing discussion so there’s more time to dig a little bit deeper.

“But you know you must be prepared. You know you could get a phone call whether it’s Bill or from an assistant GM or somebody. They want to know about a player, and you have to be ready to speak about that player with all the pros and cons.”

EVEN THOUGH BRACKETT has a cautionary tale, he also has a success story about the player who made him believe he could be a scout someday.

That player was Marty Reasoner. Brackett was a high school goalie in Massachusetts before he played at Northeastern and later, Connecticut College. He played against Reasoner, who would become a first-round pick in 1996 and play nearly 800 NHL games. Facing Reasoner back then led to Brackett evaluating what made him so good at the time.

Brackett said looking at traits such as Reasoner’s vision and selflessness along with his talent gave him a reference point when it came to player evaluations. It’s something he took with him when he began working as a scout for the Gatineau Olympiques in the QMJHL for nearly three full seasons. Gatineau won the President’s Cup in his final season.

Brackett was then hired by the Indiana Ice in the USHL as their head scout and vice president of player personnel where he helped the franchise win two Clark Cups. He drafted or signed 34 future NHL players during his time with the Ice, before he was hired by the Canucks in 2008.

He was an amateur regional scout for seven seasons and was then promoted to amateur scouting director in 2015. Brackett played a role in the Canucks drafting future cornerstones such as Brock Boeser, Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson before departing the club in 2020 to join the Wild.

“Bill and I didn’t have any prior relationship before coming to Minnesota,” Brackett said. “We go about it in a very honest way in terms of our evaluation. We try to be unbiased when we’re making those decisions or recommendations.”

His work has been especially important with the Parise-Suter buyouts at their most expensive, with hope on the horizon: The buyouts will cost a combined $1.6 million annually over the next three years, and PuckPedia projects the Wild will have $21.8 million in cap space this offseason.

The team has five pending unrestricted free agents, including Marcus Johansson, Gustav Nyquist, Brazeau, Jon Merrill and Marc-Andre Fleury, while pending restricted free agent Rossi will also need a new contract. The majority of the core is under contract for at least one more season before star forward Kirill Kaprizov becomes a free agent after 2025-26.

Once they re-sign Rossi, it will leave Guerin with more cap space to address the roster than he’s had in recent years. But he can further maximize that space by tapping into a farm system that’s been strengthened by Brackett and his staff.

“Quite honestly, it’s a luxury having a guy like Judd,” Guerin said. “I trust him wholeheartedly. We know we are going to get players that have a chance. Even when we were making the deal for David Jiricek, Judd was the first to raise his hand and say, ‘Don’t worry about our pick this year. Get him.’

“That’s when you know a guy has confidence, and a belief in what he’s doing.”