As the summer of 2012 approached, the Wild were desperate. They had missed the playoffs four straight years, and fan enthusiasm was waning.
A big splash was needed, and it arrived very early in free agency when Zach Parise and Ryan Suter inked identical 13-year, $98 million contracts. The Wild has played in 11 of 13 postseasons since then (including the qualifying round at the end of the COVID-impacted 2019-20 season).
So everything worked out, right?
The Wild did recapture their loyal audience and routinely put competitive teams on the ice. But they only won two playoff series in that entire 13-year span, coming far short of a stated goal to compete for a Stanley Cup. And, of course, Parise and Suter had the final four years of those contracts bought out in the summer of 2021.
Those buyouts hamstrung the Wild for several years. Now that they are almost completely off the books, the Wild have jumped right into another massive contract: eight years, $136 million for Kirill Kaprizov, the largest (for now) contract in NHL history in terms of both average value and overall money.
At the start of today’s 10 things to know, though, I’ll outline why I don’t see considerable risk of Kaprizov’s contract devolving into another Parise/Suter situation.
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