Wild stuck with few options to clear cap space – Minnesota Wild

For one glorious year, it looked like the Minnesota Wild might escape the messy middle. In the 2021-22 season, the Wild got a solid underdog in Kirill Kaprizov and Kevin Fialato, who supported the forwards and strong defense. Kaprizov and Fiala led their team to a 113-point season. It wasn’t enough to get past the first round, but Minnesota’s scoring that year was fifth in the NHL.

However, reality hit a year later. The Wild traded Fiala and they were unable to replace him internally, sinking Minnesota back into the mushy middle of the NHL. Not good enough to be expected to compete, but not bad enough to enter the lottery.

Even worse, it’s hard to see how they’ll pull it off next season. Or rather, the only way out is down. But when you have Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin anchoring the team, your floor can only be so low. Especially if the Wild bring back Filip Gustavsson, who says he’s a solid goaltender even if he can’t repeat his .930 save percentage.

The worst of the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter buyout penalty has arrived, with nearly $15 million in dead cap anchoring the front office options. Would Minnesota like to bring a tall, physical defender like Carson Soucy to the left side? You could see it, except Advanced hockey predicts his next contract will be three years and $2.59 million in cap space. It’s just too much!

Perhaps the Wild could bet on Sean Monahan being able to stay healthy this season after he scored 17 points in 25 games in Montreal. What?! With a projection of $2.14 million on a one-year contract?! Do you think Bill Guerin works at the Cap Space Factory?

No, Minnesota is not shopping this offseason. This summer, they go completely free to look for mushrooms and dive into the trash. Get ready to see the Wild welcome back 36-year-old Justin Braun (1 year, projected $972,000), counterpart Erik Johnson (1 year, $956,000). Maybe little-used 35-year-old Nick Foligno (one year, $887,000)?

Unless Minnesota can do something, anything, to create space. It would be a great idea to do that, except it’s practically impossible.

Currently, Minnesota has signed 15 NHLers to contracts for next season, leaving them with $8.23 million in valuable cap room. The good news is that they could easily bump up to 17 players with Marco Ross and Brock Faber almost certainly a lock to make the roster.

Those two Entry-Level Contracts participants drop their cap hit to $6.45 million, but it’s basically impossible to fill two roster spots for much less. The league minimum next season is $775,000, so the absolute minimum the remaining six roster spots can take leaves them with about $1.8 million in cap space.

It’s just not enough to bring in… well, practically anyone. What can Minnesota do?

This is where things get worse. Generally speaking, Wild’s contracts fall into one of two buckets:

1) Players with partial or complete no-trade protection.
2) Players whose removal would cause the roster to topple over like a Jenga tower.

The Wild enter next season with only six players with an average annual value of more than $3.5 million. Kaprizov ($9 million), Spurgeon ($7.58 million), Boldy ($7 million), Mats Zuccarello ($6 million), Brodin ($6 million) and Eriksson Ek ($5.25 million). Which one of them would anyone trade?

The clearest candidate is Zuccarello, who is entering his age-36 season and is in the final season of his contract. He is chattel, at least in theory. But in practice? Yeah, that’s a different story.

First, Zuccarello has a 10-team No-Trade Clause, meaning he can choose 10 teams to prevent a trade this summer. If he chooses, Zuccarello can veto a trade to virtually any team with cap space this summer. Teams like the Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings and Arizona Coyotes may have the cap space and the will to add him, but Zuccarello and his agent know that.

Plus, they can read the depth chart and know which teams aren’t interested in right wing. Or hey, they decide to allow trades to unsavory destinations. Does Guerin want to send Zuccarello to the Colorado Avalanche, who are looking for a top-six replacement for Gabriel Landeskog? Or does the front office want to see him find chemistry with Connor Bedard with the Chicago Blackhawks? Probably not, right?

There are many ways Zuccarello can be strategic about this, and that’s not even considering his relationship with Kaprizov and what a trade for Zuccarello could say about the Russian star’s future in Minnesota.

As for Spurgeon, who turns 34 in November, and Brodin, who turns 30 this summer, they don’t have to be nearly as strategic. They will have full No-Move clauses next summer.

They’re also two players that would be much, much harder to replace this offseason, even if the Wild were to waive either of their NMCs. What do you think of Faber and Calen Addison, will either of them be Spurgeon? Probably not, even if you could combine their games into one player. What about Brody? The fact is, either of them is a much better option than any defenseman on the free agent market.

Also forget about trading Kaprizov, Boldy or Eriksson Ek. If you change one of them, you might as well change them all and tear the stuff to pieces.

Minnesota’s salaries will then only be transferred at $3.5 million or less. But even this list is full of players with trade protection. Marc-Andre Fleury ($3.5M) and Alex Goligoski ($2M) both rock a full NMC, and Marcus Johansson ($2M) has a full NTC. Freddy Gaudreau ($2.1M) is only a 15-team NTC, but his five-year tenure is probably an NMC in itself for a depth player.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s about $15 million in cap space, $21 million for the three building block forwards, and $29 million for players with trade protection. When you add it up, you get $65 million of the $83.5 million salary cap, which is anything but static. When your team’s base flexibility is around $18 million, it’s a tough place to be.

So which salaries are portable? The Wild have only four players with $1 million plus salaries who are not trade protected: Marcus Foligno ($3.1 million), Jake Middleton ($2.45), Ryan Hartman ($1.7 million) and Jon Merrill ($1.2 million).

Again, which of these players can the Wild afford to lose? Foligno is probably the obvious candidate coming off a bad year. But he’s also a vice captain whose leadership is respected in the Wild locker room. Losing him also undermines much of the physical identity that Guerin and Dean Evason pride themselves on.

Even more Middleton, their rare source of blueline beef. Middleton might even be a little overpaid for what he brings, but the Wild have their reasons: they don’t have anyone else to add size to the defense corps. Without the 6’3″ Middleton, the Wild’s biggest defender is… no kidding, the 6’1″ Brodin. Prospects like Daemon Hunt (6’0″), Ryan O’Rourke (6’0″) and Carson Lambos (6’1″) aren’t helping in that department either.

Hartman is next. Even stepping back from a 34-goal, 65-point season, he was still 75th in the NHL in cost per point, costing Minnesota just $1.7 million for 37 points in 59 games. If you can get rid of him, good. But who will replace that production?

And if Guerin manages to land Merrill this offseason, congratulations … they’ve given themselves $425,000 in flexibility when weighed against the minimum salary.

Even the Wild’s tradeable players are at a standstill. They don’t make enough money for meaningful relief and are too valuable to the team to give up in the first place. It will be fascinating to see if Minnesota does anything to free up the cap room needed to do more than try to preserve the team that was last season. If they do anything more, it has to be a seismic shift for the Wild. There’s just no other way.