Fiala set NHL career-highs in goals (33), assists (52) and points (85) in 82 games but can become a restricted free agent after the season. He played this season on a one-year, $5.1 million contract he signed Aug. 16 and avoided a salary arbitration hearing scheduled for the next day.
"I mean, we'd love to have Kevin back," Guerin said Tuesday. "I don't know if it's going to be possible. But we have to dig into it a little bit and to see what we could possibly do. But there is uncertainty. That's a good word for it."
The Wild have issues with the NHL salary cap to work through in part because of the contract buyouts for forward Zach Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter in 2021, plus contracts the past two seasons for forwards Joel Eriksson Ek, Kirill Kaprizov, Marcus Foligno and Jordan Greenway. There's also the hope of signing goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, who can become an unrestricted free agent, all of which makes fitting in another contract for Fiala difficult.
"It's just where we are," Guerin said. "We have these empty cap hits [for Parise and Suter]. That's it. We'll deal with it. I think we'll be every bit as good next year.
"Would we love to have that cap space? Of course we would. But we knew exactly what we were doing. We knew exactly what position we were putting ourselves in. I'd do it again."
Fiala had 24 points (10 goals, 14 assists) in his final 13 regular-season games but had three assists in six games in the Wild's loss to the St. Louis Blues in the Western Conference First Round.
"I tried my best, tried to get it going," Fiala said Monday. "You know, playoffs are playoffs. You can't score every game and make points. There's so much other stuff you have to do.
"Yeah, six-game playoffs and have to get better obviously, have to analyze and be better next playoffs for sure. But I had a great regular season [but] because of the playoffs I wouldn't just take me down like that. Want to forget, but not forget. You don't want to forget. Even if it [stunk], you have to keep it in your head and know what is coming next year and analyze and get better next year. But still, you take the positive from the whole picture, from the whole season."
Guerin said Fiala's playoff struggles were bad timing, but said the forward's 186 points (79 goals, 107 assists) in 215 games the past four seasons with the Wild highlight how valuable he is.
"Look, we can do anything," Guerin said Tuesday. "But at what cost?"
Fiala on Monday also said he was unsure of what his future held.
"There's no other answer than we'll see," he said. "I don't know. We just lost and there's no conversation has been [had] yet and not in these two days either, so we'll see."
