{"id":519278,"date":"2026-03-23T23:11:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T23:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/519278\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T23:11:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T23:11:46","slug":"minnesota-wild-staff-and-players-stunned-after-death-of-team-reporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/519278\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Wild staff and players stunned after death of team reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flowers and stuffed animals have been dropped off outside the family home in White Bear Lake to honor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/minnesota\/news\/4-dead-overnight-house-fire-white-bear-lake-march-21-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Minnesota Wild reporter Jessi Pierce and her three children<\/a>, who lost their lives in a fire Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Firefighters and police were at the home Monday afternoon, as the Minnesota State Fire Marshal&#8217;s office continues its investigation.<\/p>\n<p>At Wild skate around Monday, team staff and players were still in disbelief.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Words just can&#8217;t express how devastated we all are,&#8221; said Wild General Manager Bill Guerin.<\/p>\n<p>Pierce was a ray of sunshine, Guerin said, and was always a pleasure to be around.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just something unimaginable that we&#8217;re all very, very shook here,&#8221; Wild defenseman Jared Spurgeon said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s devastating,&#8221; said Wild forward Mats Zuccarello. &#8220;We saw her Friday morning and then you get that message, and Saturday, it&#8217;s three kids, I&#8217;ve got three kids myself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An online fundraiser has been launched to help support Pierce&#8217;s husband, Mike Hinrichs, who was away from home when the absolutely unimaginable happened.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The children, each with their own unique personalities, shared Jessi&#8217;s zest for life and love for adventure,&#8221; the fundraising page reads. &#8220;They leave behind Mike, husband to Jessi and loving father of their children, who is now experiencing an unimaginably difficult time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I still remember when she would bring the kids into the dressing room and doing interviews holding them,&#8221; said Spurgeon.<\/p>\n<p>Wild Head Coach John Hynes said Pierce&#8217;s presence will be sorely missed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hopefully we can all carry on her legacy with, I think, the smile and the passion for the game and the way that she treated people,&#8221; said Hynes.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flowers and stuffed animals have been dropped off outside the family home in White Bear Lake to honor&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5118],"tags":[60360,5091,5,17816,161,38,5280,4,60361,162],"class_list":["post-519278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-minnesota-wild","tag-fatal-fire","tag-fire","tag-hockey","tag-house-fire","tag-minnesota","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-minnesotawild","tag-nhl","tag-white-bear-lake-news","tag-wild"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116281022746051838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}