Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold spoke this week about the future of star forward Kirill Kaprizov saying that the Wild will offer more money and term than any other team may offer in free agency when the former Calder Trophy winner is eligible for an extension next summer (as per Michael Russo of The Athletic). Kaprizov has registered three straight 40-goal seasons and will certainly hit the jackpot whenever he does put pen to paper on his next deal. Whether that is with Minnesota or not remains to be seen, but according to Leipold, that is certainly the Wild’s intention.
Leipold is aware that Kaprizov’s focus is on winning, and while the Wild have been a perennial playoff contender for the past decade (last year aside), the team hasn’t had much playoff success to speak of. Minnesota hasn’t made it out of the first round of the playoffs since 2014-15 and will have their work cut out for them if they want to prove to their 27-year-old star that they are serious about winning.
The Wild do have an opening though, and it begins next summer when the pain of the Ryan Suter and Zach Parise buyout begins to dwindle. This season the Wild are dealing with $14.7MM in dead money on their salary cap, but next year that dead money drops to just $1.7MM from 2025-29. That reduction opens the door for Minnesota to have more than $20MM in cap space to make moves to improve their team, and given the list of potential free agents next summer the Wild could be positioned to make a splash. Whether or not that will entice Kaprizov to sign long-term remains to be seen, but the Wild appear set to make the best possible push that they can with Leipold acknowledging that the team might have to give out large signing bonuses, something they’ve been hesitant to do in recent years.
The other variable that will work in Minnesota’s favor is that they can offer an eighth year on a long-term contract and will be the only team positioned to do so as other teams will only have the option to offer seven-year contracts in unrestricted free agency.
He doesn’t have to “outbid any other team”. No other team can negotiate with him
He will be gone 100%. He was “allegedly” asking about going to Chicago in a trade. Hawks will be ready to roll out the brinks truck for him when he hits free agency and will have playing with Bedard for 7 seasons for the extra incentive.
100% gone because you fell for some alleged rumor that the author walked back about five minutes after he posted it? You are one gullible dude but at least you are committed to it. Well played!
Down dog! Why do you think I’ve got “allegedly” in there.
Still no way he stays with the wild as there’s going to be much better off teams roster wise when his contract is up. Hawks would certainly be near the top with an improving young roster and tons of cap space barring some big moves before then.
Kaprizov will stay in Minnesota IF the Wild start improving in being a winning team & become a true contender within the 2 years before Kaprizov hits the open market. The biggest challenge for Minnesota is getting top-tier or even second-tier players to want to sign & play there. That’s been a problem for the franchise.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Kaprizov does leave the Wild in the end & with the cap going to be rising over the course more & more teams will have the cap space to potentially go after Kaprizov in the open market.
To me this has Eastern Conference written all over this. You don’t think Stevie Y would want a top end skilled Russian?. The Rangers moving heaven and earth to get him? Pens think this would keep the cup window open that slammed shut 4 years ago? Flyers as the final part
needed for the rebuild? The only teams out west Dallas? LA? or my dark-horse San Jose? Anaheim with all that cap and youth? Chicago
finally play with a true #1 center? Edmonton, Vegas and Colorado. nice to dream but no cap.
All makes more sense than the Wild
I have no doubt that he’s telling the truth but I don’t understand why an owner or GM would ever say this publicly. It seems like it takes all leverage away from him and gives it to the agent similarly to when Dubas said ‘we can and we will’ when asked about signing Nylander. Marner and Matthews. Just make a generic statement about always trying to build the best team that you can and move on – that’s what all the best GM’s and owners would do.
Yeah, sort of a ridiculous statement to make. At least they’ll have the cap space.
Now will the player wanna stay?