Craig Leipold talks Kirill Kaprizov’s future with Wild, Bally Sports North, world juniors, more

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Kirill Kaprizov is fit as a fiddle and motivated to get off to a sizzling start this season with the hope of a fourth consecutive big year offensively, but more importantly getting the Minnesota Wild over the hump come playoff time.

The Wild star didn’t waste time in his preseason debut Thursday night scoring 32 seconds in during a 4-2 exhibition win over the Colorado Avalanche.

When that puck was buried, Wild owner Craig Leipold leaped to his feet in his center-ice suite and joined 16,000 fans who, like him, are hoping for lots more excitement from No. 97 this season and an eventual Stanley Cup that will one day be hoisted by The Thrill.

“He’s a huge part of our future, but only if he stays here,” Leipold said.

Leipold isn’t forecasting anything alarming with Kaprizov’s happiness or his desire to stay. He was just answering a question about the need from the Wild to keep their star happy and feeling there’s a future perennial contender in Minnesota once his contract expires at the end of the 2025-26 season.

Kaprizov, who two years ago got the richest contract in NHL history for the fewest games played (five years, $45 million), has three years left on his contract but can be signed to an extension as early as July 1, 2025.

“I would be lying to you if it’s not on our minds,” Leipold said. “Kirill’s a special player and we want him to believe that we’re going to help field a Stanley Cup team. And he’s a huge part of our future, but only if he stays here.

“We have a great relationship with Kirill. I think he enjoys it here. He’s learning how to speak English now. He’s becoming more Americanized. He’s a good kid, a really good kid. And we have to make sure that when his next contract comes up, it’s going to be a long-term contract that he signs here.”

The good news is the Wild’s cap restraint from buying out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter will be over by then and the cap is expected to jump. Kaprizov will effectively get to name his price.

“His statistics will demand that he’ll get paid as an elite player, and we’ll be prepared to do that,” Leipold said.

Here are some other topics Leipold broached Thursday night:

The dark days of buyouts

Leipold understood when the club decided to buy out Parise and Suter that there would be some short-term pain due to the dead cap hits. But this much?

“Well, we knew it was coming,” Leipold said. “We knew that it would be a hard gap to try to fill when you’ve got $14 million that you can’t spend. And it became more complicated with our cap not going up enough because of the overhang with COVID and the players’ association. So we had much less money than we thought we would have. But it kind of is what it is and we’ve accepted it. We’re not complaining about it. We’re doing the best we can and we’re moving forward.”

Managing expectations?

Leipold says the Wild aren’t “rebuilding.”

“That’s a word that has not been ever mentioned in the offices of the Minnesota Wild in the last couple years,” he said.

And Leipold believes they’re going to have a very competitive team even with so little cap room to improve.

“We’re going to need some of our young guys to step up,” Leipold said. “Our hope is that they will. We’ve got a couple that we believe are ready for the next step. And if they do that, I think we’re going to have a better team than we had last year.”

(Incidentally, 2022 first-round pick Liam Ohgren was in town to see Wild doctors about an upper-body injury he suffered in Sweden this offseason. The Wild got positive news. President and general manager BillGuerin told The Athletic that Ohgren doesn’t need surgery and can begin skating when he returns to Sweden).

But it was interesting when Leipold was asked about Guerin’s comments after the season that coach Dean Evason and the players had “one hand tied behind their back” due to the dead cap hits. It seemed as though Guerin was managing expectations.

“There clearly is some truth to that,” Leipold said. “When we talk about our team now, we really talk about our window of opportunity, and clearly our big window is going to be wide open and very deep after next season. We’re going to have a lot of money to play on the open market. We’re going to have the young guys that are now going to be in their third and fourth years. So you know, it’s going to be a perfect storm for us. We’re clearly planning for that to happen. But in the meantime, we have two years. We are a playoff team. That’s our objective. Everybody internally recognizes that we try for the playoffs and we think we have a playoff team. And then when you get in the playoffs, anything can happen.”

Takeaways from playoff defeat

Leipold said it took weeks to get over their latest first-round loss to the Dallas Stars. But it offered some lessons.

“Not well. I did not process it well,” Leipold said. “I wasn’t happy with the way the games unfolded. I wasn’t happy with some of the non-calls by the referees, but that’s just my personal opinion. … We got to get tougher. We got to play harder. Every time we get in the playoffs, it makes us better. But we have to begin to learn how to play playoff hockey. It’s a different kind of game. And we all recognize it. We all know it. And we’re going to have to be better prepared for it this year.”

Contingency plans for Bally Sports North

Right now, it’s business as usual between the Wild and Bally Sports North, but Leipold acknowledged Thursday night that if the Wild get word that Bally Sports North can’t fulfill its contract for the upcoming season, there are contingencies in place.

Diamond Sports, the parent company for the Bally regional networks, is in bankruptcy proceedings while trying to negotiate new deals with Comcast and DirecTV. The NHL told the court last month it needed to have a plan by the end of the month as to how games would be distributed.

Asked about streaming, Leipold said, “Everybody is looking at that as a possibility. Whatever Bally’s ends up, we should know in the next week or so. But if Bally’s leaves this market, that’s something we’re going to be looking at as well.

“It could happen, for sure. If they pull out, we are ready to go within 24 hours with another option. But we hope that doesn’t happen because the best option for us would be staying with Bally’s.”

Leipold indicated the Wild’s options would be part streaming, part over the air.

World juniors coming?

Leipold said the Wild/Minnesota are a finalist to host the 2026 World Junior Championship, which runs from Dec. 25, 2025, to Jan. 7, 2026. He said the club put together a very strong bid, with the hope of finding out in the next month whether it will bring the very popular junior tournament to town. Vegas, Seattle and St. Louis are the other finalists.

Business is good

Even with the lack of playoff success, the Wild fan base continues to thrive. Leipold said ticket sales and sponsorships are better than they were last year. Asked what case he’d make to fans to continue to re-up despite the continued first-round disappointment, Leipold said: “Our case is what we do on the ice. The entertainment value we provide. Everybody loves winning, that’s very true. Hockey fans are passionate about the game of hockey and we — thank goodness — we’re a wonderful hockey market and our fans want to come to the game and want to see us win. A couple years from now, we’ll be in a position to go really deep in the playoffs.”

(Top photo: Matt Blewett / USA Today)