By Tony Abbott -
Since the moment the Minnesota Wild assumed the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter buyout handcuffs, fans have been counting down the days until they (mostly) disappear. Minnesota managed to stay competitive during the first two years of the buyouts. However, the Wild faltered as the combined cap hit ratcheted up to ~$14.75 million last year.
But heading into this season, the State of Hockey had a light at the end of the tunnel. The buyout cap hits remained stagnant; no matter what happened, there was just one year left. How bad could it get?
Turns out, pretty bad.
No one needs to be told the Wild have been plagued by injuries this season. Unless you were lucky enough to watch only the three games Kirill Kaprizov's played since Christmas, and only those games, you probably noticed. And it goes way further than that.
Minnesota has had nightmare injury luck striking the key pillars of the club. As of tonight's game, Kaprizov will be missing his 18th game of the year. Joining him in the 10-plus Missed Games Club are Jonas Brodin (22 games), Jared Spurgeon (15), Joel Eriksson Ek (14), Mats Zuccarello (13), and Jake Middleton (11). That's three of the Wild's top-four defensemen, a top-line winger, and a top-six center. Not to mention their singularly-talented superstar.
According to NHLInjuryViz, injuries have cost Minnesota nearly three wins by Evolving-Hockey's Wins Above Replacement. The Toronto Maple Leafs, Colorado Avalanche, and Chicago Blackhawks are the only teams that have been bitten harder by the injury bug.
The good news is that Minnesota is still seven points up on the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks despite their recent 6-8-0 stretch. Unfortunately, the Wild's injuries are in a dreadful sweet spot: Long enough to be devastating but not long enough to give Minnesota flexibility at the deadline.
No one wants Kaprizov to be Mark Stone-d through the regular season (especially not after getting shutout in two consecutive games). It's the same for Spurgeon, Brodin, Eriksson Ek, Zuccarello, or anyone else. But at least it would offer the silver lining of freeing up cap space for Minnesota to use to add to the roster via trade. Instead, the Wild have 92 man games lost from six of their top 10 players and no relief.
Let's put a dollar figure on that missed time, pro-rating their salary for their lost games.
Kaprizov: $1.866M
Brodin: $1.610M
Spurgeon: $1.386M
Eriksson Ek: $0.896M
Zuccarello: $0.654M
Middleton: $0.329M
Total: $6.74 million
And that's just the cap space lost on those top players on longer-term injuries... so far. With each further game Kaprizov misses, including tonight, you can throw another $110K on that pile. But even LTIR doesn't offer deadline cap relief unless a player won't return until the end of the season. In fact, having anyone on LTIR means they can't even accrue per-day cap space.
It's hard not to look at that cap space and imagine what the Wild could do if it was at their fingertips. They could trade for, say, Brock Boeser and Brock Nelson at the trade deadline and still have plenty left over. But instead, it's effectively dead cap on top of dead cap -- a third anchor for Minnesota to take on while trying to staying afloat.
Combine that lost injury cap space and the Wild's twin buyout penalties, and the result is, effectively, $21.5 million of dead cap to navigate around. Taking that off the top of the NHL's $88 million salary cap, and Minnesota is working with a hard limit of $66.5 million -- just barely over the salary cap floor.
It's bleak and might get worse if the Wild keep sputtering offensively. Minnesota has been shut out three times in their past 14 games and is averaging just two goals per contest. Over that span, the Wild are ranked 30th in 5-on-5 goal percentage (40.5%) and 27th in 5-on-5 expected goal percentage (45.2%), making them one of the worst teams in the NHL.
Oh, and they've lost Ryan Hartman to a (currently) 10-game suspension on top of all that. That'll be 16 games of lost time for him between suspensions and injuries when it's all said and done, another $780K of cap space the Wild don't get to actually use.
Still, it might not be enough to prevent the Wild from making the playoffs. They're still fairly comfortably in a playoff spot, and every win they scratch out without Kaprizov is another two points of cushion between them and the playoff bubble. But their banked points from October, November, and December may not be able to hold off disaster.
If that happens, it's hard to believe it'll be for any other reason than them being in the Seventh Circle of Cap Hell.
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