By Justin Wiggins -
Everything sounded fine.
From the Minnesota Wild’s front office to the players and fans, everything surrounding the Kirill Kaprizov contract extension discussions looked straightforward.
Owner Craig Leipold made it sound imminent.
And then Wednesday happened this week. And the entire state of hockey went into full-fledged panic mode.
NHL Insider Frank Seravelli reported early that day that Kaprizov and his agent had turned down an 8-year contract offer that would have made him the highest-paid NHL player in history, both in terms of total value and AAV.
Leipold proudly stated this summer he would have no hesitation in making Kaprizov the highest-paid player in the league. His mouth was writing checks he wanted to cash.
Ultimately, it doesn’t seem as though it was enough.
Is this the end of Kaprizov’s time in Minnesota? Is the best player in the history of the franchise about to be traded? Or are these just typical negotiations with a superstar in a rapidly growing salary cap world?
Those answers will likely come soon. Kaprizov may sign an hour after you read this, and the whole exercise will have been for nothing.
But let’s assume this stalemate is real and Minnesota trades him. The Wild wouldn’t be just losing a superstar. They’d be losing any little aura this franchise has left around it.
Losing Kaprizov because he doesn’t wish to re-sign in the Land of 10,000 Lakes would signal to the rest of the big-name players in the league that Minnesota is not a desirable destination for a player looking to win.
You don’t believe me?
The Minnesota “Mild” (as many in the NHL social media world outside Minnesota dub them) haven’t won a playoff series in a decade. They haven’t made it to the Western Conference Finals in over 20 years. The doubt has never left. The only sort of aura the Wild had remaining, truly, was the fact that they had Kaprizov.
Sure, there are the promising young players the Wild have been bringing along for this moment. Brock Faber and Matt Boldy look like capable Robins to Kaprizov’s Batman. Zeev Buium, Liam Ohgren, Danila Yurov, and a few other prospects look capable of making an impact.
This was supposed to be their first true contention window in franchise history. A superstar in place, with an up-and-coming one in Boldy, surrounded by impactful young players. These next few years were supposed to be the years where Minnesota Wild fans could stand up and claim their arrival as a true Stanley Cup threat in the NHL, and shed the reputation of a middling, losing franchise.
But without Kaprizov… that all goes away.
The optics are that grim in such a scenario. Kaprizov was supposed to be the piece to entice another superstar here. Instead, he could become the second superstar in franchise history to bolt for greener pastures after Marian Gaborik.
They’ll always have the allure of playing in a hockey-crazed market. Players genuinely appreciate playing in front of packed arenas at home. It’s still a great place for NHL players to raise a family and see their kids grow up around and play in a hockey-dominant community.
But the best players in the world? Players like Kaprizov, Connor McDavid, and Sidney Crosby want that for their families, but winning trumps it all. And the Wild have proven over the past 25 years that they can’t provide that.
There are plenty of markets that have had an even worse reputation than Minnesota since their inception into the league. Their expansion twin, the Columbus Blue Jackets, is the perfect example. Many of the Canadian markets are completely off the table for many players who didn’t grow up in Canada -- perhaps leading directly to their collective 32-year Stanley Cup drought.
If the Wild lose Kaprizov, they will find themselves sliding dangerously close back to the levels of those franchises.
Is that the glummest outlook imaginable here? Perhaps. But it’s a real consequence if they prove again they can’t be a desirable market for star players.
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