By Charlie Webber

One of the offseason's biggest storylines has ended with a record-setting extension. Kirill Kaprizov has secured $17 million per year for eight years to remain with the Minnesota Wild for a whopping total of $136 million. Many in the hockey world turned their attention to how this deal would serve as a measuring stick for a potential McDavid extension in Edmonton.

Before that, however, we should first examine how the Wild benefit from this deal now and their plan to navigate the cap going forward, particularly with young rising stars due to be paid in the next few seasons.

Players in that territory include Marco Rossi, Zeev Buium, and goaltender Jesper Wallstedt. Building a team around Kirill, with him earning nearly 20% of the team’s cap, will not be easy in the long run. Locking up the Russian winger was the right move, no matter the money, as he’s been the Wild’s key to relevance in the media landscape as well as in playoff contention. Letting him walk next offseason, exploring trade options, or dragging these negotiations through the season would all put the Wild in a much more dire situation.

Paying him the richest contract in league history may have left some scratching their heads, but it shows the Wild have confidence in their long-term plan and hope Kirill can open a championship window for them. Allowing this to drag through the season would have left question marks from the media, as well as from the locker room, about whether Bill Guerin is fully committed to this team.

Craig Leipold, the Wild owner, had been adamant in interviews that they are the only team capable of paying Kaprizov the highest AAV he sought. Many who had closely followed the contract developments had also theorized that the only team willing to offer Kirill this much money was the Wild.

When asked about the deal after news broke, Craig Leipold had this to say to Michael Russo of The Athletic: “I honestly never thought it would go to this number, but the cap keeps going up and up. In the next couple of years, it’s going to rise. And while I didn’t think it would be going to the places that it appears to be going, whether it’s $16 or $17 million, in the big scheme of things, we just had to get him signed, and we really had to do it for eight years.” Hearing this from Leipold leads me to believe that he may not have expected the price tag to rise this high, yet has no regrets in locking Kirill up long-term, no matter the final cost.

In terms of how this impacts Connor McDavid's contract extension, many in the media are split on the outlook. The reports coming in before Kaprizov’s signing suggested that Connor may be willing to sign a shorter-term deal at a “discounted” but still at a high AAV, anywhere from $16-18 million. However, after this record-setting deal for the Wild, many are pumping the brakes on Connor’s willingness to take a hometown discount, even in the short term, to win now.

McDavid could certainly demand $20 million AAV and get his deserved highest-value deal in the league, but it all seems to hinge on the Oilers' success in the coming spring. Speculation about a potential long-term deal to keep Connor in Edmonton will persist throughout the season, regardless of how positively their season unfolds and how content he appears as an Oiler. It seems clear at this point that we will not see any hints about McDavid’s future in Edmonton until the Stanley Cup Final concludes in the summer.

Kaprizov Ink’s Richest Deal in NHL History. McDavid Contract Influenced?

By Charlie Webber

Two Sentences on Every NHL Team on August 19th