Pro Hockey Rumors

The offseason has arrived for all but two teams now with the playoffs nearing an end.  Accordingly, it’s time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming weeks with free agency fast approaching.  Next up is a look at Minnesota.

This season saw some ups and downs for Minnesota.  They had some injuries to key players while some other core pieces took steps back.  But in the end, they were able to lock down a playoff spot despite their offensive struggles and gave Vegas a good run in the first round before falling in six.  GM Bill Guerin now has much more cap flexibility moving forward; putting that to good use is a big chunk of their checklist for this offseason.

Pick A Direction With Rossi

For a team that has had challenges developing centers, it feels like Marco Rossi has perpetually been on thin ice with the Wild.  Yes, at 5’9, he’s undersized for the position but he was the ninth-overall pick back in 2020 and despite a health scare soon after, he has become a legitimate middleman at the top level.

Rossi became a full-time NHL player in 2023-24 and had a solid rookie campaign with 21 goals and 40 points, earning him some down-ballot Calder Trophy votes.  He was even better this season, tallying 24 goals and 60 points, good for second in points on the team.  However, part of the current question stems from his usage in the playoffs when he went down to just 12 minutes a night after averaging 18:15 per contest during the regular season.

On the contract side, various reports have suggested that Rossi’s camp is using teammate Matt Boldy as a desired comparable in negotiations at seven years and $7MM per season.  Meanwhile, Guerin is believed to have offered five years at $5MM in-season, an offer that was rejected.  Notably, that would have set Rossi up to hit the open market heading into his age-29 season.  A bridge proposal is believed to have been pitched as well but with his playoff usage, finding a number that works for both sides will be tough.

There are two ways the Wild can go here.  The first is that they can work out a long-term deal to the satisfaction of both sides.  With a bridge agreement looking unlikely, the second is that they find a suitable trade.  It’s not often that young centers with his pedigree become available and with many teams – rebuilders and contenders alike – needing help down the middle, Rossi should command a strong return if that’s the route they choose.

However, it would also open up another spot at center to try to fill in a summer that should already see Guerin looking to add an impact middleman even if Rossi stays.  Landing one isn’t easy; landing two would be that much harder, even with nearly $16MM in cap space, per PuckPedia.  While restricted free agents can drag out negotiations, this feels like a situation that needs to come to a head before July 1st comes around.

Work On Kaprizov Extension

For a couple of years now, extension discussions with Kirill Kaprizov have been a key point of speculation.  When the time comes, will he be willing to commit to a long-term agreement or would he look to hit the open market and perhaps move to a bigger market?  Those questions have come even with Kaprizov consistently saying he wants to stay; including after the playoffs last month when he stated that “I love everything here. It should be all good.”  Well, come July, we’ll start to get a first sense of where things could go as that’s when he becomes eligible to sign a contract extension.

The 28-year-old has been one of the most productive players in the NHL on a per-game basis over the past four years (1.27 points per game in 264 outings) although he has only had one season with more than 80 games in that stretch.  This season, he missed half the games but still managed an impressive 56 points in 41 outings.  He’s a premier winger in the NHL, as long as he’s healthy enough to stay in the lineup.  But while the track record of injuries is worth noting, it’s unlikely to materially affect any extension talks.

For one more year, Kaprizov will make $9MM but his next contract will almost certainly blow past that by a significant margin.  With the projected growth of the salary cap and the potential for a record-setting contract coming to a winger this summer (Mitch Marner), finding comparables is a bit tricky.  Marner’s next deal seems likely to check in somewhere between 14% and 15% of the Upper Limit, a number that checks in above Artemi Panarin (the current record-holder for richest winger deal).  David Pastrnak and William Nylander are over $11MM apiece but in the old salary cap environment, they don’t hold up as well but their cap percentages start with a 13.

With the 2026-27 cap being projected to land around $104MM, we can start to come up with a framework for Kaprizov’s next contract.  At 13%, a new deal would be $13.52MM per season.  Speculatively, that feels low, especially with the expectation that Marner could beat that this summer.  At 14%, the cost jumps to $14.56MM and at 15%, $15.6MM, a number that feels on the high side, especially for an early extension.  $15MM (14.4% of the cap) has been speculated as a reasonable middle ground, an increase of $6MM per season.  That would be the richest deal in NHL history but if Minnesota is hesitant to give it to him, his camp knows someone else will later on.  Are both sides prepared to work something out around that price point?  We’ll find out this summer.

Add Scoring Help

Scoring has been an issue for Minnesota in recent years.  They haven’t been in the top 20 league-wide in goals scored for the last three seasons while they saw their goal output drop from 248 in 2023-24 to just 225 this season.  Most of the time, that firepower isn’t good enough to get into the playoffs.  While Kaprizov missing half the season contributed to some of that drop, they’re still a below-average team in that regard.

With Zeev Buium joining the Wild full-time next season, they probably don’t need to do much on the back end.  They may try to re-sign RFA Declan Chisholm but that’s about it.  That means the bulk of that cap space can be spent up front.  If Rossi re-signs for something close to his asking price, that should still leave enough for an impactful top-six addition.  Again, ideally that’s a center but they’re not in a spot where they can be too choosy.  Even if it’s a winger, an improvement would be great.  And if Rossi does wind up moving, they’d need a couple of top-six pickups.

This season, Minnesota had just four players reach the 40-point mark after having seven get there the year before.  In a perfect world, there’s some internal improvement from some of their underachievers; deepening their forward group could help in that regard.  Now that they have some long-desired flexibility cap-wise, they need to spend it on adding some offensive firepower.

Look Into Goaltending Insurance

When the Wild brought back Marc-Andre Fleury for one more season, the plan was clear.  Jesper Wallstedt would get one more year in the minors and then move up.  The two-year, $4.4MM contract they handed him soon after only cemented that.  That contract was a head-scratcher then (following the one Yaroslav Askarov got from San Jose which was also a puzzling one) and it looks much worse now as Wallstedt struggled mightily with AHL Iowa this season, posting a 3.59 GAA and a .879 SV% in 27 games in the minors.  Had they waited to sign him until now, the cost would have been a lot lower.

Is Guerin comfortable with promoting Wallstedt to the full-time backup spot behind Filip Gustavsson coming off the year he just had?   Given his draft stock as a first-round pick back in 2021, it’s fair to say he’s still envisioned as someone in the long-term plans for Minnesota between the pipes.  In that lens, it’d be reasonable to think they would want to give him the first crack at the spot.  If that’s the case, then the goaltending depth they’d need would be a veteran AHL starter who could come up in a pinch with their other two signed netminders (Samuel Hlavaj and Riley Mercer) not quite NHL-ready.

But it’s worth noting that Wallstedt is still waiver-exempt for next season.  In theory, they could send him down to Iowa again, lowering his cap charge in the process to $1.05MM.  That would then allow them to try to pursue a more proven option.  That would mean spending less on the forward position but would allow them to have a bit more piece of mind at the backup spot while giving Wallstedt a chance to bounce back from his tough year in Iowa.  Either way, they’re likely to add another netminder in the coming weeks.

Photo courtesy of Nick Wosika-Imagn Images.