How Will the Cap Surge Affect Kirill Kaprizov's Extension?

If you google “quotes about getting paid,” a surprising lack of ballplayers and rock stars appear. In its place is Forbes’s "Top 100 Money Quotes of All Time." I read all 100, looking for an interesting hook before I blast readers with a thousand words of contract analysis. 

Drowning in quotes from everybody between Henry Ford and Maya Angelou, I came to a disheartening conclusion. None of them really did justice to the thought of re-signing superstar Kirill Kaprizov. So, I’ll publish the 101st Money Quote of All Time here: 

When Bill Guerin pays Kaprizov, it will fix whatever is wrong with me. 

So, what will the deal look like if and when that fortunate day arrives? 

Six months ago, the rumor mill seemed to be closing in on a number between $14 and $15 million. The hockey blog world seemed set for a year of Kaprizov trade rumors, which would serve no purpose except to permanently raise every hockey fan in Minnesota’s blood pressure. 

In the meantime, all there was to do was identify comparable players and project those into Minnesota’s cap situation. 

Then, a bombshell salary cap announcement threw that into question. 

With cap increases like that, an estimate of $14-15 million inflates to something like $15.9-$17.1 million. 

The cap is expanding around 10% annually for three straight years, so every team will find itself with more cash than they originally planned. 

Notice the difference between that and more cash than they know what to do with. There’s only one place to spend it: free agents. Salaries will naturally increase with all those dollars chasing a limited player pool. 

As Yogi Berra said, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” 

That leaves a bit of a mess for those who’d like to estimate Kaprizov’s cap hit. First, combining contract comparables with steep cap inflation creates a complicated math problem. Second, it leaves a lot of intangible factors. Public analysts won’t be able to estimate the exact impacts of those intangibles -- at least, not before seeing what agents will demand under the new cap. 

That being said, let’s dive into the numbers. 

David Pastrnak and Artemi Panarin are the two most popular comparables for Kirill Kaprizov. Pastrnak and Panarin are top-line wingers. They have also received a Hart Trophy nomination, an honor that Kaprizov was on track to achieve this season before his injury. 

Expand that list to other Hart-nominated wingers who signed long-term extensions in the past 15 years, and you add Patrick Kane, Nikita Kucherov, Jamie Benn, Corey Perry, and Claude Giroux. 

But how do we account for cap inflation? For comparison, it’s important to try to recreate the circumstances under which the deals were signed. Therefore, we should work off salary cap estimates from the time of signing rather than the actual cap. The teams and agents who negotiated these deals were trying to predict the future at the time of signing, just like Guerin and Kaprizov’s agent, Paul Theofanous, will on this deal. 

One method could be to divide contract AAV by the total salary cap in the first season of the deal. Teams, agents, and even public analysts can usually estimate that cap value within a few million dollars. That will avoid making assumptions about the parties' thinking at the time. 

On the other hand, that doesn’t capture the market well. Kaprizov’s deal will be negotiated in the middle of a rapidly expanding cap environment for the first two years of the deal. A better metric to capture that would be the AAV divided by the average salary cap over the contract lifetime. 

The problem with this method is that it’s rare for NHL teams to have three years of clarity on the salary cap. So, how should we assume agents and teams were behaving at the time? 

Since the 2010-11 season, the salary cap has increased by an average of 4% per year. If the agents and team executives made the same assumption when signing, we can gain some insight into how they may have projected the average salary cap across the contract lifetime. 

So, that gives two numbers that we can use to adjust those seven contract comparables for cap inflation: 

1. Contract AAV as a percentage of salary cap in the first year of the contract (few assumptions, but doesn’t fully capture today’s inflationary cap environment)
2. Contract AAV as a percentage of average lifetime salary cap (captures upcoming salary cap inflation but makes assumptions about agents’ and teams’ projections) 

So, what do those numbers tell us? 

This method gives numbers far lower than I expected. Using all seven contracts, the first statistic yields an estimated $13.7 million AAV, and the second gives an AAV of $14.35 million. At first, I thought this was because Giroux’s contract pulled down the average, but removing it only pushes the AAV to about $14.57 million. 

I decided to investigate the comparables more closely. Panarin’s contract implies an AAV between $14.8 million and $15.8, but that was only a seven-year deal. Pastrnak’s deal implies something lower, around $14 or $14.6 million. Kane’s is the richest of these deals, and it only implies an AAV of about $15.3 to $16 million. 

It’s important to note that age at signing may push Kaprizov’s AAV lower. All of these deals started in younger seasons than Kaprizov’s will, except Panarin’s deal -- which will expire a year younger than Kaprizov’s deal. 

Leon Draisaitl is another piece of important context. Draisaitl reset the market recently with a $14 million deal starting in 2025-26. He also plays center, which makes him a tough sell if Theofanous wants to use him as a comparable. On the other hand, Draisaitl probably isn’t even the best player on the Edmonton Oilers, and Kaprizov is undoubtedly the best player on the Wild. 

There’s also the issue of the signing date. Draisaitl signed on September 3, 2024, later than most of these deals. It’s possible that his agent got wind of upcoming salary cap increases. It’s also possible that his agent did not, but the Oilers did. The first scenario implies that Draisatl’s camp was willing to take a smaller percentage of the cap. Meanwhile, the latter implies Kaprizov should try to get as much or more because Draisaitl’s agent couldn't account for massive cap increases. 

For that reason, I made two comparisons in Draisaitl’s case: a team-friendly estimate that assumes his agent knew of the upcoming cap explosion and an aggressive contract that assumes the opposite. 

The team-friendly assumptions imply that a player as good as Draisaitl should sign for between $14.7 and $15.25 AAV, and the aggressive assumptions imply $15.76 to $16.45. 

Draisaitl and McDavid would be ambitious comparables for Kaprizov. Kane, Pastrnak, and Panarin are not. By the numbers, the conversation seems to start around $15 million. 

After that, it’s all about the intangibles. For example, Connor McDavid is set for a contract extension sometime before the 2026-27 season. If Draisaitl’s $14 million reset the market, McDavid’s could shatter it into a thousand tiny pieces. If McDavid demands his due, the days of the best player in the world making $8.7 million per year will be long forgotten. Not only that, but it seems that McDavid can justify whatever price he wants and still provide positive value for the Oilers. 

Along with McDavid’s upcoming unprecedented AAV, the influx of cash for every team in the league will drive Kaprizov’s price up in a way cap inflation doesn’t fully capture. Not only is his value higher for every team, but the amount of new liquid cash in the market will make a bidding war far more threatening to Minnesota. 

In a normal year, players typically re-sign with their previous team because other teams haven’t prepared their books to sign away that superstar. Panarin’s market is the closest example to the market Kaprizov will enter. Other teams were able to prepare for Panarin’s availability because it was evident that the Chicago Blackhawks wouldn’t have the cap to retain him. 

Panarin’s deal took up a much higher percentage of cap over the lifetime of the deal than the other six comparables, who re-signed with their original teams. Kaprizov’s market will be similar to Panarin’s -- not because teams don’t expect Minnesota to retain Kaprizov, but because many teams will have the liquidity to afford Kaprizov due to massive cap increases in 2025-26 through 2027-28. 

It’s possible that won’t have much of an impact if every other team in the league blows through that new 2025-26 cap liquidity this summer. However, that seems unlikely since they would still have flexibility from the cap increases of the next two seasons. If he hits the open market, Kaprizov can fit into nearly every NHL team’s budget. 

So, if the conversation starts at about $15 million AAV and other factors might work in Kaprizov’s favor, an AAV of up to $17 million isn’t out of the question. If the Wild don’t re-sign before the summer of 2026, there will be a true bidding war for one of the best wingers in the NHL. 

That’s what’s wrong with me. Watching a team for two decades that finally produced a Hart trophy-worthy player, only to see him depart after only six seasons, keeps me up at night. It drives me to spin up 1600-word blog posts about one player’s contract to find some catharsis. 

So here’s my plea: Open the checkbook, Bill Guerin. If you won’t do it for me, somebody else will do it for their team’s local bloggers. Jealousy is a disease, and it would become a permanent condition for me.