Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
You can? Are the Panthers shopping them? I certainly don't see them showing up as a pending UFA and if you think Barkov signs that contract in today's NHL you are delusional. Second of all Minneapolis is not Florida or a defending Stanley Cup champion and players aren't taking discounts to play there. It's kind of silly to make these types of comparisons quite frankly. Kaprizov is the highest paid NHL player for the same reason Dak Prescott is the highest paid NFL player. It's all about timing and worth to the team they play on. Neither player is top 5 in their respective leagues but they are both irreplaceable for their respective teams so those teams either pay them market value at that time or they walk and your team gets much worse and people in the building start getting fired. Make no mistake, if the Wild don't get this deal done with Kaprizov, there would be another team ready to pay him this much money and the Wild likely go into a tailspin and people in the organization start getting fired. It's really not that difficult to understand why contracts like this happen.
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Huge cap escalation does this and Kaprizov is the 1st to sign the big deal for money under the new cap. Marner took $5M less and it is going to make things a bit harder for Minnesota now.
But from their prospective they have 5 players signed for 4 years or longer.
Faber
Eriksson Ek
Kaprizov
Boldy
Middelton
Combined AAV is $42.1M and averages out to be $8.42 per year(starting next year). Considering the quality of players, that is still good and Kap's contract does not kick in until next year. Add Rossi and 2 potential rookie of the year players and a bunch of other quality prospects they are going to be good keeping Kap.
If they can lock up Gustavsson, I can see them being a contender for the next 4 years with this contract.