Will the Minnesota Wild ever get out of their own way?
It should be an exciting time to be a Minnesota Wild fan.
Fresh off setting the rookie ice time record, do-it-all defenseman Brock Faber inked an eight-year extension with his hometown team. Perennial Selke contender Joel Eriksson Ek, sniper Matt Boldy, and 800-game vets Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon have long-term, team-friendly contracts. Best of all, the club’s cap dark ages are almost over.
The Zach Parise-Ryan Suter buyouts will account for nearly $14.74 million of Minnesota’s cap space in 2024-25. After that, the Wild are effectively off the hook ($1.66 million in dead cap through 2029) in time to re-up superstar Kirill Kaprizov.
If the Russian stays in the Twin Cities, coach John Hynes has the opportunity to reunite him with Eriksson Ek and Boldy on a dynamite top line; the Wild’s three best forwards more than doubled (69-33) the opposition’s high-danger chances as a unit last season. With Faber and Brodin locked up on the top pair, Minnesota could escape the hangover of those fateful buyouts with an impressive core intact.
Saving over $13 million next season should give an already respectable Wild squad (173 W since 2020-21, 10th in the NHL) a chance to contend for championships. The problem? GM Bill Guerin has already burned through his long-awaited spending money to keep a group of low-upside overachievers together.
For the next three seasons:
Middleton: $4.35 million
Hartman: $4 million
Foligno: $4 million
Trenin: $3.5 million
Gaudreau: $2.1 million
Total: $17.95 million#mnwild and Bill Guerin just traded one Salary Cap Hell for another.
The buyouts rid the Wild of Parise’s diminishing on-ice returns and Suter’s notoriously difficult personality as they waded into their late 30s. They also forced Guerin to get creative to keep the suddenly cash-strapped Wild competitive.
That meant finding contributing players in unconventional places. Jake Middleton, Freddy Gaudreau, and Ryan Hartman were AHL All-Stars who had yet to carve out meaningful roles in the show before Guerin brought them in.
Gaudreau provided a middle-six scoring pop from 2021-2023, averaging over .5 points per game in his first two seasons with the club. Hartman, a noted agitator, had been with the team for two middling seasons before busting out for 34 goals and 65 points in 2021-22.
Punishing blueliner Middleton arrived midway through that campaign to offset the diminutive stature of team captain Spurgeon; when the latter is healthy, the two produce dominant defensive results (54.27% of expected goals, 57.58% of high-danger chances).
In-house veteran players also provided quick fixes. Mats Zuccarello and Marcus Foligno joined the Wild before the buyouts but logged career-low ice time in Minnesota before linking up with Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek, respectively.
Zuccarello has now recorded seasons of 79, 67, and 63 points opposite Kaprizov, one of the world’s most dangerous goalscorers. Each tally would have been a career-high when Guerin signed the former New York Ranger. Foligno appeared on Selke ballots twice with Eriksson Ek as their towering ‘GREEF’ line with Jordan Greenway steamrolled its opposition by a score of 46-15 from 2020-2022.
As stopgap solutions go, all five players did an excellent job supporting the Wild’s stars and keeping the team’s head above water. Guerin doesn’t pay them like stopgaps, though. His well-meaning but misguided emphasis on locker room culture and loyalty led to ill-advised extensions across the board.
Of the deals, only Zuccarello’s (signed through 2026) ends before 2027. Only Gaudreau’s ($2.1 million AAV) is worth less than $4 million. With Faber’s $8.5 million cap hit beginning in 2025 and Kaprizov due a hefty raise the following year, most of the desperately needed buyout money is spoken for. Like the marlin from the Old Man and the Sea, the windfall has been torn to bits before ever reaching the shore. Guerin made the critical error of signing players based on their best, not their baseline.
Zuccarello has had a fine career and enjoyed his greatest individual successes teeing up Kaprizov. He still turns 37 next month and has controlled just 46.45% of scoring chances without the Russian since 2020. With his point totals diminishing by the year, can Hynes afford to pencil him in next to No. 97 any longer? Can ‘Zucc’ hack it anywhere else?
Gaudreau is another player who relies on increasingly scarce minutes beside the big guns to succeed. He floundered further down the lineup after Hynes replaced Dean Evason, scraping together just 15 points in 67 games en route to a team-worst -23 rating. With All-Rookie forward Marco Rossi and newcomer Marat Khusnutdinov blocking his path back to the middle six, Gaudreau’s future is in limbo. The Wild have four more trade-protected seasons to decide what to do with the 31-year-old.
Middleton’s metrics are great with Spurgeon, but so are everyone else’s. Without the captain, he’s controlled less than 45% of expected goals and a shocking 36.57% of actual goals (-36) at 5-on-5 since landing in Minnesota. Middleton’s selflessness and net-front toughness are staples of any winning team, but are they worth $4.35 million? Former Wild D-men Nick Seeler and Carson Soucy fill similar roles for much less in Philadelphia and Vancouver, respectively.
If Middleton is emblematic of Guerin’s infatuation with heart and hustle, Foligno is its poster child. He’s 12th in the NHL hits since joining the Wild, and his intangibles and physicality will make him a useful NHL player long after his scoring touch (17 G, 38 P per 82 GP since 2019) has abandoned him. That makes him worth keeping around through the twilight of his career.
It doesn’t make him a $4-million man through his age-36 season, especially now that his body has begun to break down; he’s missed nearly 17 games per season since 2019. The pact became more confusing when Guerin brought in Kaprizov’s old buddy Yakov Trenin, essentially a younger Foligno, on a similar deal only months later.
Counting Trenin, Guerin has doled out seven legit NHL contracts over the past year. They’ll take up over 33% of his cap space when Parise and Suter (kind of) come off the books next summer, but only Faber and perhaps Hartman, a legitimate middle-six scorer in his prime, will provide value for money.
Maybe Guerin’s lengthy playing career has led him to overvalue the same gutsiness he displayed on the ice. Maybe his loyalty to the men who got him through the past few seasons pulled at his heartstrings and purse strings.
Either way, creating a new generation of veteran problem contracts might land him back at square one after four years of hard work. It’s not the future Wild fans envisioned when they slammed the door behind Parise and Suter.