The Minnesota Wild signed RFA Nino Niederreiter to a five-year deal worth $5.25MM a year and $26.25MM overall. First reported by the StarTribune’s Michael Russo, the contract comes four days before both parties’ scheduled salary arbitration hearing.
Michael Russo tweets the following contractual breakdown:
2017-18: $4.6MM
2018-19: $6.075MM
2019-20: $5.85MM
2020-21: $4.25MM
2021-22: $5.475MM
The contract values falls right on the spectrum of this off-season’s forward RFA signings. Niederreiter receives more money than Viktor Arvidsson ($4.25MM) and Conor Sheary ($3MM), and slightly less than Tomas Tatar ($5.3MM), Ondrej Palat, and Mika Zibanejad ($5.35MM). The contract does not include any NMCs or NTC, and it does not include any signing bonuses.
If Niederreiter maintains his current production, the Wild should be happy with the contract. The above contracts around the 5.3MM mark all have movement limitation clauses, implying that those players may have received more money had they not sought NTCs and NMCs. Moreover, this contract leaves approximately $10.5MM for the Wild to sign RFAs Mikael Granlund and Marcus Foligno.