Patrick Maroon isn’t going to have his number retired by the Minnesota Wild, but the big forward did have a decent run with the team during his short tenure with them in the 2023-24 season. After announcing his retirement last season, the three-time Stanley Cup winning forward has officially started the next phase of his career - coaching. The 37-year-old is beginning his life behind the bench as an assistant coach for the Muskegon Lumberjacks in the USHL.
Maroon was at the tailend of his NHL career when he joined the Wild in July of 2023. The Tampa Bay Lightning, needing to trim a little salary, sent Maroon and Max Cajkovic to the Wild for a 2024 seventh-round pick. With the Lightning also retaining 20% of his cap hit, it was a low-cost move to add veteran leadership to the Wild locker room.
Injuries limited Maroon to 49 games, but he still managed to chip in 16 points (4 goals, 12 assets) before he was dealt to Boston at the trade deadline for Luke Toporowski and a 2026 conditional sixth-round pick despite being in the middle of recovery for back surgery. He appeared in two regular season games for the Bruins and 13 post-season games where he picked up a pair of assists. It was a short stay in Boston as he signed with Chicago last summer. In 65 games with the Blackhawks he put up 5 goals and 14 assists.
Offense was never his calling card (although he did pot 27 goals early in his career while he was with the Oilers), rather he was a physical presence on the ice. Despite his limited ice time in Minnesota (he played 12:46 a game on average) he finished eighth on the team in hits that season with 71.
On both ends of Maroon’s tenure with the Wild, Bill Guerin acquired some young forwards. Unfortunately, neither really worked out. Cajkovic spent 25 games in the system (5 with the Iowa Wild and 20 with the Iowa Heartlanders) before he was dealt to the Pittsburgh organization for Will Butcher. Toporowski finished off the 2023-24 with 11 points in 17 games for the Iowa Wild and followed it up with a 28-point season last year. He signed with the Hershey Bears this season.
Maroon, who was working at a youth camp in Tampa earlier this summer, will bring a unique perspective to young players in the USHL. He’s played with some of the best players in the league in Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov, and Kirill Kaprizov, but he’s also been a player that has earned his ice time as a bottom-six forward.
He also has the weight of three Stanley Cups behind his word. From the 2018-19 season until the 2021-22 season he played in 16 straight postseason series and 97 games. That experience speaks well to the young players coming up in professional hockey.