Wild GM confident Kirill Kaprizov will re-sign in Minnesota
Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin isn’t worried that star Kirill Kaprizov will head back to Russia.
Last week, Kevin Weekes dropped a bombshell, reporting that negotiations had “gone cold” between Kaprizov and the Wild and that KHL club CSKA Moscow was set to offer him a long-term contract.
Guerin told Michael Russo of The Athletic that negotiations haven’t, in fact, gone cold and that both sides will continue to work on a new contract…
“We love Kirill, we want to get him signed. We know sometimes these things take awhile, but you have to be patient, you have to be open minded and just keep moving forward. These things just aren’t done overnight. I’ve experienced it as a manager, and I’ve experienced it as a player. For me, nothing’s gone cold. My door’s always open, my phone’s always on. So … we just got to keep working at it. I know Kirill’s agent feels the same way. I really don’t want people to get too, too worried about this. That tweet was just kind of out of left field. I can’t worry about that stuff.”
The Wild drafted Kaprizov in the fifth round of the 2015 draft. He spent five seasons playing in the KHL and then finally made the trip overseas in 2021. In his rookie season, Kaprizov led the Wild with 27 goals and 51 assists and played a key role in helping the team put up a surprising 35-16-5 record.
Kaprizov is a restricted free agent this summer and it seems that he’ll follow @Artemi Panarin’s footsteps and sign a bridge deal that walks him to unrestricted free agency. Panarin signed a two-year entry-level deal with Chicago in 2015, signed a two-year extension a year later, and then finally inked a massive $81,500,000 deal with the New York Rangers as a UFA.