Minnesota Wild Trivia
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48 free Minnesota Wild trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Minnesota Wild were born because the North Stars left for Dallas, and the franchise has spent 25 years turning that grievance into an identity: a retired No. 1 for the fans, water from local lakes poured into the rink, and a logo whose eye is the North Star. This Wild trivia quiz covers all of it: the naming finalists, Jacques Lemaire, Marian Gaborik's first goal, the 2003 run with two comebacks from 3-1 down, the rotating captaincy, the Parise and Suter contracts, Devan Dubnyk's arrival, Bruce Boudreau's 106-point team and the Kirill Kaprizov era. There are questions on the arena in Saint Paul, the goal songs from Steppenwolf to Prince, Nordy, the North Stars warm-up jerseys, the Quinn Hughes trade and the 2026 series win that ended a nine-year drought. Easy questions for casual fans sit beside genuinely hard ones about the expansion years and the smog-delayed scouting trip that found Kaprizov. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedic and reference sources before publishing, and each question carries a citation. For more, try our NHL trivia and hockey trivia pages.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who joined the NHL alongside the Wild?
Columbus Blue Jackets
Columbus Blue Jackets and the Wild came in together as the league's 29th and 30th teams, filling their first rosters by taking turns in a two-team expansion draft in June 2000.
Q 02Which Minnesota politician campaigned in the 1990s to bring the NHL back to the state?
Norm Coleman
Norm Coleman, then mayor of Saint Paul, saw his campaign pay off in 1997, after a plan to move the Winnipeg Jets to the Twin Cities had collapsed and the Jets went to Phoenix instead.
Q 03Which Minnetonka native led the expansion bid and became the Wild's first majority owner?
Bob Naegele Jr.
Bob Naegele Jr., once a high-school goalie, made his fortune in billboards and by reviving Rollerblade during the in-line skating craze, then fronted the group that won the franchise in 1997.
Q 04Who was the Wild's first head coach?
Jacques Lemaire
Jacques Lemaire never named a permanent captain in Minnesota, passing the C around his players month by month until he resigned in 2009.
Q 05Who scored the first goal in Wild history, at Anaheim in October 2000?
Marian Gaborik
Marian Gaborik, 18 and the club's first-ever draft pick, scored in a 3-1 loss; five days later Minnesota native Darby Hendrickson scored the first goal on home ice.
Q 06Why did the Wild retire the number 1 before their first home game?
To honour the fans
To honour the fans, the Wild retired No. 1 in a ceremony before their first home game in October 2000, so no player has ever worn it for them.
Q 07Which team swept the Wild in the 2003 conference finals?
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim
Mighty Ducks of Anaheim goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere shut the Wild out in each of the first three games, and Minnesota's only goal of the series came in Game 4.
Q 08Whose 2003 Game 7 overtime goal beat Colorado, the last goal ever scored on Patrick Roy?
Andrew Brunette
Andrew Brunette scored 3:25 into overtime after the Wild had twice come from a goal down, tying Game 7 with under five minutes left in regulation.
Q 09Which team did the 2003 Wild beat in seven games after trailing 3-1, days after doing the same to Colorado?
Vancouver Canucks
Vancouver Canucks led Game 7 2-0 on home ice before the Wild scored four unanswered goals, completing a second straight comeback from three games to one down.
Q 10Which Latvian former Wild forward died of a heart condition during a game in Europe in 2004?
Sergei Zholtok
Sergei Zholtok, playing for Riga 2000 during the NHL lockout, left a game in Minsk with about five minutes to play and collapsed in the locker room; he had been treated for an irregular heartbeat while with the Wild.
Q 11Which goalie was traded to Edmonton in 2006 for a first-round pick, ending a Wild goalie controversy?
Dwayne Roloson
Dwayne Roloson went on to carry Edmonton to the 2006 Stanley Cup Final, where a knee injury in Game 1 ended his run and the Oilers lost in seven.
Q 12Which Slovak veteran did the Wild acquire from Los Angeles on draft day 2006?
Pavol Demitra
Pavol Demitra cost the Wild a first-round pick and prospect Patrick O'Sullivan, then repaid them with 64 points in his first season, tied for the team lead.
Q 13The Wild's only division title as of 2026 came in which division?
Northwest
Northwest was the Wild's division until the NHL scrapped it in the 2013 realignment, so the banner they clinched by beating Calgary in April 2008 is one they can never add to.
Q 21Which Prince song did the Wild adopt as their goal song after his death in April 2016?
Let's Go Crazy
Let's Go Crazy was first played after goals at a playoff game days after Prince died; season-ticket holders then voted nearly 2-to-1 to keep it for the next season.
Q 22Which coach led the Wild to a then-record 106 points in 2016-17, his first season in charge?
Bruce Boudreau
Bruce Boudreau's first Wild team won 12 straight games in December, a run ended on New Year's Eve by a visiting side riding an even longer winning streak.
Q 23Which forward and prospect did the Wild lose to Vegas around the 2017 expansion draft?
Erik Haula and Alex Tuch
Q 14Which team signed the Wild's first-ever draft pick in 2009, after he scored five goals against them in one 2007 game?
New York Rangers
New York Rangers signed him after injuries held him to 17 games in his last Wild season, and he answered with 42 goals in his first year in New York.
Q 15Who became the Wild's first full-time captain in October 2009 after eight seasons of monthly rotation?
Mikko Koivu
Mikko Koivu got the C for good when new coach Todd Richards ended the monthly rotation, and he wore it for 11 seasons until leaving the Wild in 2020.
Q 16Where did the Wild open the 2010-11 season with two games against Carolina?
Helsinki
Helsinki's Hartwall Areena hosted both games, and the Wild flew home without a win: a 4-3 loss, then a 2-1 defeat in a shootout.
Q 17Which star defenseman did the Wild trade to San Jose in 2011 for Setoguchi, Coyle and a first-round pick?
Brent Burns
Brent Burns was drafted as a right wing and remade into a defenseman in Minnesota; six years after the trade he won the Norris Trophy with San Jose.
Q 18Zach Parise and which defenseman signed identical 13-year, $98 million Wild contracts in 2012?
Ryan Suter
Ryan Suter and Zach Parise never saw the end of those deals: the Wild bought out both players on the same day in July 2021, with four years still to run.
Q 19Whose 2014 Game 7 overtime goal knocked out the Central Division champion Avalanche?
Nino Niederreiter
Nino Niederreiter had already tied the game once in the third period; the Wild trailed four times in Game 7 and never led until his overtime winner.
Q 20Which goalie's January 2015 arrival sparked a 27-9-2 run to the playoffs?
Devan Dubnyk
Devan Dubnyk cost only a third-round pick from Arizona, less than a year after he had been sent to the minors, and won the Masterton Trophy for his turnaround.
Erik Haula and Alex Tuch went as a package: the Wild traded Tuch so that Vegas would draft Haula and leave defensemen Matt Dumba and Marco Scandella alone.
Q 24Which general manager was fired in July 2019 after just 14 months on the job?
Paul Fenton
Paul Fenton traded away three core forwards in under six weeks in early 2019, and the Wild then missed the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons.
Q 25Kirill Kaprizov scored the overtime winner in his NHL debut in January 2021 against which team?
Los Angeles Kings
Los Angeles Kings led 3-1 going into the third period before the Wild rallied to force overtime, where Kaprizov scored 3:47 in.
Q 26Who was the Wild's 2015 first-rounder, drafted before Kaprizov?
Joel Eriksson Ek
Joel Eriksson Ek went 20th overall, 115 picks ahead of Kaprizov, yet it was the fifth-rounder who won the Calder Trophy as the NHL's top rookie in 2021.
Q 27Kaprizov's overtime 'golden goal' at the 2018 Olympics beat which surprise finalist?
Germany
Germany, whose best Olympic finish had been bronze, lost the final 4-3 in overtime; the NHL kept its players home from those Games, leaving the stage to KHL players such as Kaprizov.
Q 28Which KHL club did Kaprizov win the 2019 Gagarin Cup with?
CSKA Moscow
CSKA Moscow was where Kaprizov led the KHL in goals two seasons running; he stayed until 2020, signing with the Wild five years after they drafted him.
Q 29In 2021-22, Kaprizov became the first Wild player with what?
100-point season
A 100-point season had eluded every Wild player until Kaprizov finished with 108, 25 more than the old club record; the Wild still went out in the first round.
Q 30Which veteran goalie did the Wild acquire before the 2022 playoffs, only to lose to St. Louis?
Marc-Andre Fleury
Marc-Andre Fleury, a three-time Stanley Cup winner acquired from Chicago at the trade deadline, then stayed three more seasons and retired with the Wild in 2025.