The Minnesota Wild gave Kirill Kaprizov the largest contract in NHL history last September. But as this offseason has dragged on, many have questioned whether the Wild overpaid for their franchise star.
With an annual average value (AAV) of $17 million, Kaprizov’s contract became an eye sore as the Wild have had to play financial gymnastics to improve the team this summer. But according to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Wild had to pay up because the Philadelphia Flyers were waiting in the wings.
“They’ve been building…they’ve been adding some good players. But they were like, we need a star. And we need a difference maker…and they aren’t drafting high enough to get that player,” Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts podcast this week. “...Like I had heard, if Kaprizov had hit the market this year, Philly was going to drop bags of cash on his house. I think Minnesota knew that one of the reasons they did that was because they knew Philly would have.”
Wild’s cost to keep Kirill Kaprizov skyrocketed due to looming Flyers threat
Friedman’s intel explains a lot of the things that happened during Kaprizov’s contract negotiations last summer. Wild owner Craig Leipold promised fans that last summer would be like “Christmas morning” and that no team could pay Kaprizov as much as they would to keep him in Minnesota. But when July 1 came and went without a deal, concerns grew that Leipold’s comments may have jacked up the price.
In the end, it may have been the looming threat of the Flyers. The Flyers returned to the playoffs last year, but they did so without a true superstar on the roster. The Wild wisely took Kaprizov off the board when he agreed to an extension in September, but Philadelphia showed they were willing to spend that money anyway by signing Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet last week.
That offer sheet carries the risk of a negative impact toward the Wild’s plans this offseason. But it also takes some of the heat off of general manager Bill Guerin. Jack Eichel ($13.5 million AAV) and Connor McDavid ($12.5 million AAV) didn’t come close to what Kaprizov wound up getting from Minnesota. Yet,if they didn’t write the check, Kaprizov’s camp could have moved forward knowing some team would give him the money in free agency.
This doesn’t clear up the Wild’s cap situation, which is down to a projected total of $1.1 million according to Puckpedia. But it also was a worthy price to pay, keeping a key player in place that may have helped the Wild earn a spot on Dylan Larkin’s preferred list of destinations after requesting a trade from the Detroit Red Wings.
The situation could also foreshadow Quinn Hughes’s negotiations, which could carry a large number that a number of other teams are willing to pay if the Wild won’t open up their wallet.
WIth the cap increasing, the sting of Kaprizov’s (and potentially Hughes’s) contract should go down over the next eight years. But any notion that the Wild overpaid could be swept under the rug as the Flyers (or perhaps another team) were willing to write the check.
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