For those who like to glimpse hockey’s future, Friday night’s opening round of the NHL Draft is about as exciting as it gets. But with no first-round pick in his possession, Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin is planning for something different as the first 32 NHL prospects have their names added to the draft board in Los Angeles.

“Boring,” he said, of the team’s current plans to watch, not participate in, the opening round. “We follow, and if an opportunity presents itself to get into the first round, we will do it. But if it doesn’t, we won’t. We’re not worried about it.”

In late November of last season, Guerin shipped the team’s 2025 first-round pick and a few players to Columbus and got defense prospect David Jiricek in return. Jiricek, who is huge, young and a former Top 10 pick, got into just six games for the Wild —registering a goal and assist — and missed the last month of the season because of an abdominal injury. But Guerin has no qualms about missing Friday’s first round in order to get Jiricek in green and red.

“We feel that we already picked in getting David Jiricek,” Guerin said. “He was a very high pick, so we’re comfortable where we are.”

Outside interest in Rossi

After getting a fourth-round pick for Freddy Gaudreau in a trade with Seattle on Thursday, the Wild have five picks spread across Rounds 2-7, which begin Saturday morning. That could change, as teams commonly make trades while the draft is happening.

For example, former Wild first-rounder Marco Rossi is coming off the best offensive year of his career and a restricted free agent. After playing a top-line role during the team’s injury-ravaged regular season, Rossi was placed on the fourth line in the playoffs.

While he confessed to being irked by the perceived demotion, Rossi scored a pair of playoff goals and played the role that was asked of him. But the perception has been that the Wild are looking to move him, with Guerin seeking a plug-and-play NHLer, rather than a draft pick, for the diminutive Austrian.

On Thursday, Guerin pushed back on the idea that he’s eager to offload Rossi.

“We like Marco. Marco’s a good player,” Guerin said. “He had a good season, he’s a good teammate. There is this funny narrative out there that we don’t like him. That’s not the case.”

Having said all that, Guerin admitted that he has spoken to other teams about Rossi.

“Yeah, people have called,” he said. “But like I said, I’m not rushing this kid out of town, that’s for damn sure.”

Money to spend, carefully

Because he bought out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in the summer of 2021, Guerin lost a combined $14.7 million in salary cap space the past two seasons. That changes this year, as the buyout penalties slim down to a $1 million apiece for the former franchise cornerstones. And with the cap rising this season, Guerin finally has some real money to spend.

Guerin acknowledged that signing known commodities is simpler than assessing talent in the draft or making a trade, but he pledged discipline in investing Wild owner Craig Leipold’s money.

“It’s always easier just to go out and sign guys, but that’s not really the approach you want to have,” he said. “That’s kind of where you get yourself in trouble. It’s gotta be calculated, thought-out decisions. Try to get good value for the people that you’re signing. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ll make more, but I’m trying to limit them. We don’t want to get into contracts that we really regret.”

While the team’s primary focus is on acquiring forwards, with a defensive corps that Guerin has said is pretty well set, he added that he expects to find a goaltender. The depth among the Wild’s puck-stoppers is lighter with the retirement of Marc-Andre Fleury, and while they expect Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt to be the team’s tandem in 2025-26, they are looking to add another option in the crease.

Kaprizov is top priority

Guerin also talked about star forward Kirill Kaprizov, who will be an unrestricted free agent after this season unless the Wild can sign him to a contract during the Wild’s one-year window of exclusive negotiation rights, That starts when free agency officially opens July 1. Guerin and Leipold have said that securing Kaprizov’s future in Minnesota is their top priority, with the owner vowing that no team will offer the high-scoring Russian more money or more years.

NHL-watchers have predicted that Kaprizov, 28, is coming off a season where he missed half the Wild’s games due to injury. But still posted a career-best 1.4 points per game average, and could command $15 million per year or more, up from the $9 million the Wild are currently paying him annually.

“We’ve talked. We don’t have to sign him on July 1. We can. I don’t see that happening, but you never know,” Guerin said. “We’d like to get it done as soon as we can. I’d love to do that. But you know, these things take time.”

And Guerin, as it currently stands, will have some time on his hands Friday night.

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Nearly every Windows user has had a run in with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death” at some point in their computing life. Now, after more than 40-years of being set against a very recognizable blue, the updated error message will soon be displayed across a black background.

The changes to the notorious error screen come as part of broader efforts by Microsoft to improve the resiliency of the Windows operating system in the wake of last year’s CrowdStrike incident, which crashed millions of Windows machines worldwide.

“Now it’s easier than ever to navigate unexpected restarts and recover faster,” Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft wrote in a Wednesday announcement.

As part of that effort, Microsoft says it’s “streamlining” what users experience when encountering “unexpected restarts” that cause disruptions. And that means a makeover to the infamous error screen.

Beyond the now-black background, Windows’ new “screen of death” has a slightly shorter message. It’s also no longer accompanied by a frowning face — and instead shows a percentage completed for the restart process.

Microsoft says this “simplified” user interface for unexpected restarts will be available later this summer on all of its Windows 11 (version 24H2) devices.

And for PCs that may not restart successfully, Microsoft on Wednesday also said it’s adding a “quick machine recovery” mechanism. The will be particularly useful for during a widespread outage, the tech giant noted, as Microsoft “can broadly deploy targeted remediations” and automate fixes with this new mechanism “without requiring complex manual intervention from IT.”

Microsoft said this quick machine recovery will also be “generally available” later this summer on Window 11 — with additional capabilities set to launch later in the year.

By REBECCA SANTANA and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala and Honduras have signed agreements with the United States to potentially offer refuge to people from other countries who otherwise would seek asylum in the United States, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday at the conclusion of her Central America trip.

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The agreements expand the Trump administration’s efforts to provide the U.S. government flexibility in returning migrants not only to their own countries, but also to third countries as it attempts to ramp up deportations.

Noem described it as a way to offer asylum-seekers options other than coming to the United States. She said the agreements had been in the works for months, with the U.S. government applying pressure on Honduras and Guatemala to get them done.

“Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,” Noem said. “We’ve never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the United States.”

During U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such accords called safe-third country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed “safe.”

The U.S. has had such an agreement with Canada since 2002.

The practical challenge was that all three Central American countries at the time were seeing large numbers of their own citizens head to the U.S. to escape violence and a lack of economic opportunity. They also had extremely under-resourced asylum systems.

In February, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed deals with El Salvador and Guatemala that allowed the U.S. to send migrants from other nations there. But in Guatemala’s case it was to only be a point of transit for migrants who would then return to their homelands, not to apply for asylum there. And in El Salvador, it was broader, allowing the U.S. to send migrants to be imprisoned there.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Mexico would not sign a third safe country agreement, but at the same time Mexico has accepted more than 5,000 migrants from other countries deported from the U.S. since Trump took office. She said Mexico accepted them for humanitarian reasons and helped them return to their home countries.

The U.S. also has agreements with Panama and Costa Rica to take migrants from other countries though so far the numbers sent have been relatively small. The Trump administration sent 299 to Panama in February and fewer than 200 to Costa Rica.

The agreements give U.S. authorities options, especially for migrants from countries where it is not easy for the U.S. to return them directly.

Sherman reported from Mexico City.

More than a decade ago, Logan Hensler dared to dream on the backyard rink in Woodbury.

Those dreams are about to become reality for the 18-year-old defenseman, who is expected to hear his name called in the first round of the 2025 NHL Draft. A smooth skater blessed with a 6-foot-2, 200-pound frame, Hensler finished as the No. 12 ranked North American skater, according to NHL Central Scouting.

As he reflected on his journey to this point, Hensler highlighted the importance of having his dad Joe, mom Alicia, and younger brothers Dylan and Dain in the stands with him on Friday night at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” Hensler said. “I’m really excited to get to share it with the family.”

There were some brief discussions between parents Joe and Alicia a couple of months ago about how much it was going to cost for the family to attend the 2025 NHL Draft. Were they going to be able to make it work?

“Just trying to figure out what we could and couldn’t do,” Joe Hensler said. “We were talking about it in the kitchen and our youngest actually spoke up almost declaring that he was going to be there no matter what.”

Leave it to the preteen to be the voice of reason.

“We were like, ‘Well, I guess the decision has been made, right?’ ” Joe Hensler said with a laugh. “We knew we had to make it happen so we could be together for it.”

This has been a long time coming for the family. It was pretty clear from a young age that Hensler was going to excel in the sport. He refined his skills on the backyard rink, developed into a standout as a peewee and bantam in the local youth association, and parlayed that into a roster spot with the highly touted Minnesota Blades.

“He started to get recognized outside of the neighborhood,” his father said. “We would have people come talk to us about opportunities down the road, and they had a little bit broader view than what we had at the time.”

The ascension continued for Hensler after he helped Hill-Murray take third place in the state tournament as a freshman. His natural ability piqued the interest of the USA Hockey National Team Development Program in Plymouth, Mich.

That left the family with a decision, and they enlisted the help of Hill-Murray boys hockey coach Bill Lechner, who has been around long enough to know whether a kid is ready to compete at that level. There was no question when it came to Hensler.

“You could tell right away with him,” Lecher said. “We’ve had these conversations with a lot of families. We weren’t going to lie to them. Even if we wanted him to stay for our sake, we knew he was ready to go.”

The thought of moving away from home gave Hensler some pause.

“It was really challenging,” he said. “I took until the last minute to sign the contract that they gave me.”

The experience with the NTDP gave Hensler the tools needed too succeed by putting him in situations to fail. He had to learn how to handle adversity in real time. That was exemplified by a stretch of play during Hensler’s first year, when he started to internalize some of his mistakes on the ice.

“It was starting to pile up on him a little bit and he took it all on himself,” NTDP coach Nick Fohr said. “I remember having him in my office and going through the clips. He started to realize it wasn’t all on him, and he started to let go of the mistakes. It seemed like it almost freed him up mentally, and everything started to go in the right direction for him.”

The growth was on full display during Hensler’s second year with the NTDP as he slowly separated himself from some of his peers.

“I’m really thankful for that experience,” he said. “It was probably the best decision I’ve made so far in my career.”

That put Hensler in position to hit the ground running when he got to the University of Wisconsin, and while he had to navigate ups and downs as a freshman, he impressed Badgers men’s hockey coach Mike Hastings with his maturity.

“The best part about him is he’s got an unbelievable balance of humility and confidence,” Hastings said. “I was really proud of him looking at where he started and where he finished, because it says a lot about him not taking anything for granted.”

What was the biggest lesson Hensler is going to take away from his first year in college?

“The physical side of it,” he said. “Just using my size and strength to my advantage is important. That was the biggest learning curve I had going to college. It’ll be huge to keep building on that while I continue to elevate my game.”

As excited as he is to have Hensler back on campus this year, Hastings is eager to see where he ends up this weekend.

“I believe anybody that invests in Logan Hensler is going to be glad that they did,” Hastings said. “He’s a great young man and a special player.”

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