Article: The Wild's "Five-Year Plan" Has A Core Contradiction

[1Brotherbill]

On 10/11/2024 at 12:18 PM, Pewterschmidt said:

Kirill is a player that can't be replaced with volume

Yess he can.  25 players in the league last year were a point per game player.  Kiril was 10th in the league.  Seems like a lot but reality is he just scores with an occasional assist.  He is a 50 50 player.  Once again seems like a lot but he is making 9 Million right now which is 36th in the league.  His extension is going to be somewhere in the 12 to 14 million range now that Driasital is signed to a rediculous contract.  That would put him in the top 5 of the league in salary.  I personally wouldn't want to pay a player on my team money equal to someone who scores 50 points more on average.

Now if he rattles off a 150 point season I would change my mind but he will probably be around the 100 point mark again.  Boldy will be about 10 behind him and 4 years younger and making half of what Kiril will make in his next contract. 

Two players at 7 million who are point per game players are better than 1 who is just over a point per game player.  

Once again I would miss the Russian a lot but it is a business at the end of the day. 

[MacGyver]

11 hours ago, 1Brotherbill said:

His extension is going to be somewhere in the 12 to 14 million

If he does sign here it will be for at least $14M he will become the highest paid player in the league. CL will over pay because he already said he would.

I think we have a tendency to over value Kaprizov's skills here in Minnesota because he is the best thing we have seen since Gaborik. There has not been much in between the two. He stands out on a mediocre team. For all that he is there are things he is not. He is no longer dekeing his way through defenseman. Not that he ever did much of that ala McDavid. Twice last night he carried the puck in the zone only to turn his back to the defenseman and the goal looking for the trailer to pass to. He is a known factor around the league now and as always teams will adjust to a opposing players tendencies.

His first year or two everyone marveled at his ten and two position of his skates. The announcers were acting like it's the first time they have ever seen such a thing when in fact many NHL'ers can do it. I'm not hearing much of that anymore. He still has a tendency to throw blind passes that either go the other way or never develop into a play.  Yes in fact he's human. I'm not ripping on him he's still a top tier player. But I don't deny what I see either.  The Wild could find themselves in a better position if they can find a team to overpay for him in trade value rather than CL over paying for him. 

[Will D. Ness]

13 hours ago, 1Brotherbill said:

Yess he can.  25 players in the league last year were a point per game player.  Kiril was 10th in the league.  Seems like a lot but reality is he just scores with an occasional assist.  He is a 50 50 player.  Once again seems like a lot but he is making 9 Million right now which is 36th in the league.  His extension is going to be somewhere in the 12 to 14 million range now that Driasital is signed to a rediculous contract.  That would put him in the top 5 of the league in salary.  I personally wouldn't want to pay a player on my team money equal to someone who scores 50 points more on average.

Now if he rattles off a 150 point season I would change my mind but he will probably be around the 100 point mark again.  Boldy will be about 10 behind him and 4 years younger and making half of what Kiril will make in his next contract. 

Two players at 7 million who are point per game players are better than 1 who is just over a point per game player.  

Once again I would miss the Russian a lot but it is a business at the end of the day. 

I think you are oversimplifying things a bit here by inducing all value is boiled down to a single (and inherently flawed) statistic.  

[Up North Guy]

3 hours ago, MacGyver said:

If he does sign here it will be for at least $14M he will become the highest paid player in the league. CL will over pay because he already said he would.

I think we have a tendency to over value Kaprizov's skills here in Minnesota because he is the best thing we have seen since Gaborik. There has not been much in between the two. He stands out on a mediocre team. For all that he is there are things he is not. He is no longer dekeing his way through defenseman. Not that he ever did much of that ala McDavid. Twice last night he carried the puck in the zone only to turn his back to the defenseman and the goal looking for the trailer to pass to. He is a known factor around the league now and as always teams will adjust to a opposing players tendencies.

His first year or two everyone marveled at his ten and two position of his skates. The announcers were acting like it's the first time they have ever seen such a thing when in fact many NHL'ers can do it. I'm not hearing much of that anymore. He still has a tendency to throw blind passes that either go the other way or never develop into a play.  Yes in fact he's human. I'm not ripping on him he's still a top tier player. But I don't deny what I see either.  The Wild could find themselves in a better position if they can find a team to overpay for him in trade value rather than CL over paying for him. 

ODC will not share your opinion, but I do to an extent.

[raithis]

On 10/13/2024 at 9:30 AM, Need4speed99 said:

Raithis,

All the teams winning or in contention drafted a LEGIT superstar and built around that. Both in the draft and free agency. Yes each team endured a few down years but they spent wisely and didn't invest heavily in aging players. 

The problem with the wild, they have employed the same strategy for as long as liepold is the owner. Always a "competitive" rebuild, never a full rebuild. And all the wild have done is become the kings of one and out.  I forget what they call it when you do the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

This year they need all the vets to stay healthy and play at a high level. If they can't and the team is mediocre as always you think kap is going to stay. 

That what they have done though.  The difference is that we didn't have much for prospects in the pipeline and we had two huge contracts hanging over the team.

So we went into rebuild mode and continued to tear out the old core and got rid of our old "stars", focusing more on the young, good players we had at the time Eriksson Ek, Kaprizov, and a still-rising Boldy.

We added lots of good prospects to build around those players, but due to recapture penalties, we could not go out and get the occasional free agent will lots of high end like most rebuilding teams do.  Keep in mind that the successful teams still sign a few aging vets to help those young players learn and grow during that time in the transition of the team.  The ones that put almost everything on the youngsters tend to struggle to reach their potential (such as Buffalo).  This is what a lot of rebuilding teams do.

Since we did not have the cap space to outbid teams and did not have much for prospects at that point that were good enough for the NHL (you can thank Fletcher and to a certain extent Fenton for that one), we used what he had to turn that into more high picks and signed/acquired a few more veterans as placeholders to while those picks developed - and called it competitive rebuild even though it was essentially a rebuild.  We might have even had to sell Kaprizov on the idea that we would be competitive to even get him to sign for 5 years to begin with.

Yes, it may look a little different, but once the prospects are ready and heading into their primes, almost all of those aging veterans start to fall off.  As soon as next year we can start being a little more aggressive in free agency, and as prospects pan out or don't, we can identify the holes we need to fill from free agency for those as well.  Like any rebuilding teams though, some of those prospects HAVE to pan out or it will fall apart.  That's why a lot of teams that rebuild fail.  They either draft poorly, are too quick to try to get back to contention, or they go to free agency too often and can't afford their prospects later on.  We are doing the right thing in all those areas.

[1Brotherbill]

11 hours ago, MacGyver said:

If he does sign here it will be for at least $14M he will become the highest paid player in the league. CL will over pay because he already said he would.

Current top is 13.5 in Matthews.  Next year Draisaitl comes into the mix at 14.  The same year Kiril's extension kicks in Connor McJesus is due to kick in.  You would assume that he will be top paid player in the league by a million or more.  So we are looking at 15.5. These are all people who score 120 plus a year.  Kiril barely can score 100.  

No way that the Wild pay him 14 plus.  Well they can and probably will but reality they shouldn't. 

[MacGyver]

7 minutes ago, 1Brotherbill said:

Well they can and probably will but reality they shouldn't. 

This is the spot CL put himself into with his nobody will offer him more money than we will statement. Why a owner would publicly say something like that is mind boggling. Sometimes I wonder if this team is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. 

Edited October 15 by MacGyver