The Wild should take full advantage of the rising salary cap.
Announced on Friday, the NHL sent a memo to all 32 teams today announcing the anticipated salary cap for the next three seasons. Those salary cap projections are as follows:
2025-26: $95.5 million
2026-27: $104 million
2027-28: $113.5 million
So what does this mean for the Wild?
Well, the Wild are still currently paying Zach Parise and Ryan Suter a total of $14,747,626. Next year that drops down to just $833,333 to each of them for a total cap hit of $1,666,666. That is an extra $13,080,960 the Wild will get to spend during the 2025-26 season.
Not only that, but the salary cap will be going up to a max of $95.5 million. This means the Wild will now have $21,771,668 in available cap space for the 2025-26 season, $49,171,668 in 2026-27, and $71,133,334 in 2027-28, according to PuckPedia.
The Wild have most of their roster signed for next season. Their expiring UFA's include: Marcus Johansson, Devin Shore, Jon Merrill, Declan Chisholm, Travis Dermott, and Marc-Andre Fleury. They have a few expiring RFA's as well. Marat Khusnutdinov, Marco Rossi and Jakub Lauko are the RFA's.
Everyone else on the Wild's current roster is signed through at least the 2025-26 season. If we had to guess who the Wild would likely keep I would go with Rossi, Lauko, and Khusnutdinov as the three most likely players.
They will have to make a decision on Merrill or Chisholm and it will likely be Chisholm. Zeev Buium is expected to sign with the team so there is no need to sign both Merrill and Chisholm. Dermott will be gone, if not sooner.
Fleury is set to retire and I assume Johansson will not be brought back. They could re-sign Shore as a depth piece. Assuming Rossi gets a bridge deal of around $3-5 million AAV, I could see the Wild spending about 9 million on Rossi, Lauko, Khusnutdinov, Chisholm, and maybe Shore.
This does not include Buium or Danila Yurov, who has one year left on his KHL contract and is expected to be in Minnesota for the 2025-26 season. After all this, the Wild will likely have 10-15 million in cap space come July 1.
Now, Ryan Hartman ($4M) has a full no-trade clause this season but it switches to a 15-team no-trade clause. Freddy Gaudreau ($2.5M) also has a 15-team no-trade clause and Yakov Trenin ($3.5) does not have any type of protection on his four-year contract.
If Rossi gets a long-term deal, I could see the Wild trying to trade someone who makes a decent amount just so they could spend some money in Free Agency.
Free Agency?
They do plan on spending money during the Free Agency (FA) window. Wild General Manager and President of Hockey Operations Bill Guerin and Wild Owner Craig Leipold have a plan in place and Leipold said back in October that the Wild plan on spending in FA and have a few targets.
Unless the Wild give Liam Ohgren or Yurov a chance in the top six for the whole 2025-26 season, they have an open top-six spot for an FA. With about 10 million to spend, it wouldn't surprise me if the Wild decided to spend almost all of that on that exact role.
Some options include Nikolaj Ehlers, Brock Boeser, Mikael Granlund, Brock Nelson, Mitch Marner, Mikko Rantanen, Anthony Mantha, Andrew Mangiapane, Andrei Kuzmenko, Yanni Gourde, Reilly Smith, and Jeff Skinner.
It is safe to say that Marner and Rantanen are going to cost a little bit too much and there probably isn't a chance Granlund would play for the Wild again. Skinner, Smith, and Mangiapane would be a bit of a project and don't seem like good fits.
This leaves you with Ehlers, Nelson, Boeser, Gourde, and Kuzmenko as possible fits. Kuzmenko just got traded on Thursday night to Philadelphia so he could re-sign there and Gourde isn't really seen as a top-six scoring forward anymore.
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Guerin took Nelson over elite scorers like Tage Thompson, Cole Caufield, and Jason Robertson for Team USA so you know he likes him. Boeser is from Minnesota and is a valuable right-shot scoring forward, something the Wild don't have, and Ehlers is a top-six scoring forward who shoots left.
Nonetheless, you can expect the Wild to take advantage of this rising salary cap and be active in the FA market. But the main focus come July 1 will always be to extend Kirill Kaprizov and with the cap hit going to $104 million when Kaprizov's deal starts, one can expect Kaprizov's next contract to start with a minimum of $14 million.
Let us know what you think by commenting below or on the Forum.
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