Wild promote 3 to assistant GMs, name Hendricks Iowa’s GM

The Minnesota Wild have announced several promotions within the club’s hockey operations department.

Wednesday, the team announced that Mat Sells, Michael Murray and Chris Kelleher have all been promoted to assistant general manager roles while Matt Hendricks will now serve as the general manager of the Iowa Wild.

The moves come after some in-season turmoil in the front office that included the departure of assistant general manager Chris O’Hearn. It wasn’t immediately clear if the team plans to fill their old roles to further build out the front office but all are expected to retain some of their current responsibilities.

Sells has been with the Wild for the past five seasons, serving first as the hockey analytics director before becoming the club’s vice president of hockey strategy, in which he oversaw salary cap management, contracts, analytics and hockey strategy for the past three seasons.

Murray joined the organization ahead of the 2020-21 season as an assistant to the general manager but has spent the past three seasons as the director of hockey operations and Iowa’s general manager. He’s expected to continue helping with hockey operations for both Minnesota and Iowa.

Kelleher is entering his 18th year with Minnesota, moving from a part-time pro scout to director of pro scouting before he became the director of player personnel ahead of the 2022-23 season. He’ll continue to oversee scouting and player personnel efforts, the club says.

Hendricks has been the Wild’s assistant director of player development for the past five seasons. While he’s expected to still support player development operations, he’ll now add responsibilities for the day-to-day operations of the AHL team.

Minnesota is coming off a disappointing season marred by injuries and inconsistent performance from many players, which caused the Wild to miss the playoffs for the first time since the 2018-19 season.

The team ended up with the 13th pick in this year’s draft, which will be held June 28 and 29 in Las Vegas.