Kirill Kaprizov didn’t just reset the NHL marketplace by securing a record-shattering extension from the Minnesota Wild.
He triggered an earthquake that is likely to produce reverberations across the industry.
The Athletic spoke with seven certified player agents immediately after Kaprizov’s $136 million, eight-year extension ($17 million average annual value) with the Wild broke Tuesday morning to gauge what they think of the contract and how they see it affecting their clients down the road.
Kaprizov established new highs in total value of an NHL contract and yearly compensation, and he secured 17.8 percent of the cap — closer to the maximum allowable 20 percent than other superstars have negotiated for in recent years.
Of course, he did so in a rapidly evolving environment where the NHL and NHL Players’ Association have already projected payroll ranges out for three seasons to increase “predictability on core salary cap economics.” By announcing that the current $95.5 million cap ceiling will jump to at least $104 million next season and $113.5 million in 2026-27, the league has essentially armed top players with even more ammunition to push for the highest AAVs possible on long-term deals to guarantee that their contracts age well.
With that in mind, let’s turn things over to the perspective of player agents, none of whom were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the Kaprizov negotiations.
The contract
To get the Kaprizov extension across the finish line, the Wild had to ante up a second time after having the player’s camp turn down an eight-year, $128 million offer ($16 million AAV) last month.
By doing so, they made good on a public promise from Wild owner Craig Leipold, who vowed that no team would offer Kaprizov more money than he could get in Minnesota.
Did they essentially outbid the rest of the market to retain their own player?
Agent 1: “Every deal is unique. What’s unique about this is that it’s obviously a team that doesn’t have the same ability to sign players in the market, so keeping their own players is a very high priority to them, right? There are certain teams that can go into the UFA market and sign players, and they’re not really one of them.”
Agent 2: “I think this is the first manifestation of the concreteness of the growing salary cap. … We’re going to see a whole series of deals that are going to push things even further. It’s going to drag up the highest-paid bracket that’s historically been in that $9 million to $12 million range. I think those elite players are going to now get into the $12 million-plus range, depending on which franchise it is. To me, this was a bit of a perfect storm of a team that really needed to sign the player and were going to pay at all costs to stay in their competitive window as opposed to losing a player of this ilk and going into some kind of retool.”
Agent 3: “Sometimes it’s just luck and circumstance. Kaprizov had all of the right leverage — a rising cap, a team that had a bunch of guys already signed. The other reality is the cap’s set too low this year. I think you’re going to find that the cap is not just going to be at $104 (million) next year, and I think that $113.5 (million in 2026-27) is going to end up being like $120 (million). So the cap is going to go much higher, and sometimes it’s timing and situation, and I think that’s what happened here.”
Agent 4: “That’s a significant payment. Now you’re thinking, ‘Are these guys the basketball players and the football players now?’ We’re not at that stage yet because we don’t have the TV revenue to compete with, but $17 million is a significant number.”
Impact on potential UFAs
Kaprizov’s massive deal comes at a time when other high-profile forwards are involved in negotiations with the possibility of unrestricted free agency looming in summer 2026.
That includes Jack Eichel of the Vegas Golden Knights, Kyle Connor of the Winnipeg Jets, Adrian Kempe of the Los Angeles Kings and Martin Necas of the Colorado Avalanche, among others.
(We’ll leave Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid aside, given the unique nature of his situation).
Will this deal set any new precedents that impact those negotiations?
Agent 5: “While the circumstances surrounding Kaprizov’s contract negotiations were somewhat unique, the fact remains that the $17 million number is now in the marketplace and can’t be ignored. Going forward, it will unquestionably have a gravitational effect for star-level players.”
Agent 6: “It’s a noteworthy contract. It cannot be ignored by either side in negotiations. For all these players, we’ll see how it plays out, but I believe the players that are still unsigned really have no pressure on them to get anything finalized at this point. The pressure builds on the teams. It’s not on the player in these situations, particularly when all of these players have already made significant amounts of money in their careers. The pressure just continues to move toward the teams every day that these players aren’t signed.”
Agent 2: “This is going to dramatically impact how higher-end players get paid going forward. I still believe we can see some of the top players do shorter-term contracts that will be inflated over what shorter-term contracts have been before. This will have a dramatic impact on how the best players get paid. Because it’s been trending this way, but this is really the first true example, in my view, of the impact of knowing what the salary cap will be for the next several years, which is growth like we haven’t seen before consistently in the industry.”
Agent 3: “The toughest part about this contract is what might have been for the players who signed just before it. If you look at guys like (Mitch) Marner and (Mikko) Rantanen, they obviously wanted to go to specific places, but if they would have gone anywhere or they would have waited or even signed a one-year deal, they could have gotten a lot more. Those are the deals that are the outliers. That’s almost $40 million total less (than Kaprizov), regardless of Vegas or Dallas having tax advantages.”
What comes next
After years of being mired in a flat-cap environment that yielded only incremental gains for the NHL’s top players, we’re clearly moving into a realm where the biggest difference-makers can command big raises.
What does the Kaprizov deal tell us about the years ahead?
Agent 3: “Generally, in our system, the more years you give to a team, the more cap hit you get.”
Agent 2: “I think we’re going to see more and more unutilized cap space moving forward. I think the percentage of cap space used up historically is going to go down as the cap continues to go up because I think there’s going to be a whole group of teams that are currently at or near the cap that won’t be able to do business or sustain continuing to be at that level in the next three to four years — which is why there’s going to be a higher distribution of the additional cap space to the top players than we’ve seen historically.
“The salary-arbitration mechanism is going to keep the middle class healthy, but I think the group that’s going to get impacted with his redistribution of a team’s cap space is probably that lower-middle class — that group of players that historically have been in the $2.5 million-plus range, that kind of third-line player or fifth/sixth defenseman. Some of those players who have historically done pretty well, they’re the ones I feel like will get squeezed as we move forward.
“One of my concerns with the whole system is that we could end up getting into a situation where there’s less parity than what we’ve experienced in the past several years, which was one of the goals of the salary cap from the league, which is an important part of why the league has had success and has grown. I do worry about getting back to haves and have-nots that we had pre-cap.”
Agent 4: “I think it’s great any time you see increased contracts. It’s always a positive sign. There’s more money in the marketplace, the cap’s going up, the teams are willing to spend more money on the star players — that’s great. But there is a caution here because I think it can divide the upper class and the lower class. The upper class is always going to get paid, but I think it still squeezes out mid-market (teams), and teams are still going to look to pay guys the minimum. So down the road, it may be an upper-class and a lower-class league.”
Agent 2: “The last point I would make is that there’s so many significant players that are going to be up doing new contracts in the next few years, that I can’t see how this push doesn’t sustain itself with obviously Connor McDavid, Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar — some of the best players in the game at their positions are coming up in the next two seasons, and this in my view will manifest itself to solidify this contract as the new norm for elite players.”
Agent 7: “To quote the late Bob Goodenow: ‘A rising tide raises all ships.’”
(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
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