The Minnesota Wild made a massive investment in signing sophomore Brock Faber to an eight-year, $68-million contract, but it's all about being proactive, says Adam Proteau.

The Minnesota Wild locked up a huge piece of their competitive puzzle Monday afternoon, agreeing to an eight-year, $68-million contract extension with defenseman Brock Faber.

The new deal will pay him an average annual amount of $8.5 million per season beginning in 2025-26. Barring any pricier contracts being signed after next summer, it'll also make the 21-year-old the highest-paid defenseman on the team.

While that is a massive amount of money for a player who’s got only 84 games of regular-season NHL experience under his belt, Wild GM Bill Guerin has done solid work in investing in the team’s future with this deal.

Indeed, Guerin and the Wild aren’t the only ones handing out a lot of money to defensemen in their NHL infancy in recent years. 

In Ottawa, 22-year-old Jake Sanderson is heading into Year 1 of an eight-year extension worth $8.05 million per season. In Buffalo, 21-year-old budding star Owen Power is entering the first year of a seven-year extension paying him $8.35 million per year.

So, why are NHL teams pouring so much salary cap space into defensemen who’ve barely scratched the surface of their career in The Show?

Well, it’s mostly all about projecting what your youngsters can do and paying more to lock them in rather than negotiating every few years.

NHL teams have tended to keep young players’ paydays modest and reward veterans at or near the end of their career with huge contracts. But the other route is seeing GMs being proactive with their youngsters, giving them gigantic raises with the expectation those deals will be bargains sooner than later.

There will almost assuredly be instances where these big-money extensions for defensemen don’t work out as management has hoped. But for the most part, teams have scouted their young players well enough for them to feel comfortable paying them big money. 

The alternative to such an approach is that teams pinch pennies for their youngsters, alienate them and open up the possibility of an offer sheet that would raise the salary bar exponentially or the player only accepting deals that bring them to unrestricted free agency.

Instead, by paying more money early on, GMs are making an informed gamble that their draft and development team have done what’s asked of them. And locking up players like Faber, Sanderson and Power is a smart move that will save cap space as the cap ceiling rises by upwards of five percent in the years immediately ahead.

Again, “proactive” is the key word with deals like Faber’s. Guerin understands what a gem he has in Faber, and he’s wasted no time making it clear to Faber how important he is to the Wild’s present and future. That will infuse Faber with confidence, and he no longer has to worry about where he’ll be working for nearly the next decade (if he was ever worrying to begin with). Guerin has put Faber’s mind at ease, and that should also make Faber more comfortable about the macro picture in Minnesota.

Anyone who saw Faber put up 39 assists and 47 points in 82 games last year knew they were watching an elite performer. And soon enough, he’s going to be paid like one. It’s the cost of doing business with the salary cap, and Minnesota fans can now rest assured a crucial team component will be wearing a Wild uniform for years and years.

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