The NHL 15: Somebody is going to give Kirill Kaprizov a lot of money ... but who will it be?

Before each NHL season I look at 15 players that I think are the most intriguing players in the NHL. Not necessarily the best players (though, sometimes they are), but players that offer some sort of intrigue, a big storyline or figure to be a major X-factor for the season. This is The NHL 15. We continue today with Kirill Kaprizov, the NHL’s other major pending unrestricted free agent after this season. Somebody is going to pay him big money. But who will it be?

---

I feel like everybody that watches hockey on an even casual level has a pretty good understanding that Minnesota Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov is an outstanding player.

But sometimes I’m not sure we fully grasp just how good he is. I’m not going to go as far as to call him underrated, because that wouldn’t be fair and would be a laughable mis-use of the word. But I still feel like he’s better than a lot of us realize, and the thing I keep going back to with him is this — he completely changed the entire vibe and feel of the Wild as a team and an organization.

He made them interesting.

He made them kind of fun and exciting.

He gave them a player you wanted to watch play hockey.

Prior to his arrival at the start of the 2020-21 season, you had to go all the way back to the early days of the organization when Marian Gaborik was their best player to find the last time they had a true STAR level player on their roster. And even his impact and star-power was kind of shackled by the Jacques Lemaire system and the height of the NHL’s dead puck era.

That’s not to say the Wild haven’t had good players or good teams since then. They have. They’ve had some very good teams. They’ve had some very good players. But those teams were never … fun. They were never exciting. You never really wanted to watch them or care to watch them. They just kind of …. existed. They never had a player that could captivate you and bring you out of your seat. They never really had an MVP-level player that could compete for scoring titles and scoring 40 or 50 goals.

And then Kaprizov came along.

Let me give you some numbers.

• In the history of the Wild organization there have only been five 40-goal seasons. Kaprizov has three of them.

• There have only been four seasons where a player topped 80 points in a season. Kaprizov has two of them, and they just so happen to be the top-two seasons. He is the only player that’s recorded more than 85 points in a season, and his top-two are 108 and 96. He has three of the top-eight scoring seasons in franchise history.

• He’s done both of those things despite only playing five seasons for the team, and in two of those seasons he played less than 60 games. His rookie season was the shortened 2020-21 season and he scored at a 40-goal, 75-point pace over 82 games. HIs 2024-25 season was cut in half by injury and he was scoring at a 50-goal, 112-point pace over 82 games. His 82-game averages for his career are 48 goals and 99 points. On a per-game basis his five seasons in the NHL are arguably all the best offensive seasons the Wild organization has ever seen.

Nobody in the history of the Wild franchise has ever been close to that sort of production. Ever. Not in a single season. Not overall. Not even Gaborik. Kaprizov’s 1.21 point per game average is by far the top mark in franchise history, and a 0.34 edge over the No. 2 player (Gaborik) on the list. He is far and away the most productive player the team has ever had.

On a league-wide level he’s been a top-10 producer in both goals and total points since entering the league, and is consistently one of the most impactful players in the sport.

His injury last season was one of the major factors in Minnesota’s second-half slide, and had he remained healthy he would have likely been a Hart Trophy finalist and maybe helped Minnesota stay closer to the top of the league standings. The injuries to him and top center Joel Eriksson Ek (not to mention the defense) were devastating blows to the team and its success.

A Wild team with better injury luck and a full season of Kaprizov is a sleeper Stanley Cup contender in the Western Conference.

But that brings us to the giant elephant sitting on the couch of the Wild’s living room.

The contract. The reported contract offer that he already turned down. The potential free agency.

Will Kaprizov be there all season?

Will he be there at all this season?

Will he be there after this season?

What should they do about all of this?

Let’s talk about it.