The Wild’s bold moves never made them ‘serious contenders.’ What now?

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Craig Leipold smiles as he surveys the scene from his center-ice suite at a bustling Xcel Energy Center for a preseason game against the lowly Chicago Blackhawks.

The Minnesota Wild owner has just taken his private plane back from the NHL’s Board of Governors meeting in New York, where commissioner Gary Bettman proudly told owners many of the league’s franchises are worth around $2 billion.

“The franchises are just golden,” Leipold says.

The Wild owner says his season-ticket renewals are over 90 percent, corporate sponsorships are at a new high and club seats have been sold out since he bought the team 18 years ago.

It’s the business portfolio of a Stanley Cup contender, even if the Wild have been anything but.

They’ve been around for 24 years but have had only one trip beyond the second round of the playoffs. And that was 21 years ago. They missed the playoffs last year and have won only two playoff rounds in the past decade. Yet the hockey-crazed state keeps coming back for more.

In spite of a record of regular-season success yet playoff ineptitude, Leipold could never stomach a tear-it-down rebuild. It’s not in his DNA, he says. The Wild, under his watch, have always been a cap-ceiling, win-now team — never bad enough to pick near the top of the NHL Draft.

From the outside, it looks like a permanent residence in the NHL’s mushy middle. But internally, Leipold says, the team sees a way out.

In an exclusive interview with The Athletic, he reveals that the Wild are in year two of a five-year plan, which ends — they hope — with a championship.

This was determined last year in a meeting with president and general manager Bill Guerin and his staff, Leipold says.

Because of this, Leipold says there’s “zero heat” on Guerin, who is entering his sixth season. Leipold is convinced that Guerin and his staff can deliver.

What must happen to make it work? Some key elements:

• The team must re-sign superstar Kirill Kaprizov, who is eligible for an extension after this season. Nobody, Leipold says, will offer more money than the Wild, but it’s imperative that they convince him he can win in Minnesota.
• The team’s current core and rising stars like Matt Boldy and Brock Faber must thrive.
• The team’s top prospects, like Jesper Wallstedt and Danila Yurov, must arrive and be impactful.
• And next summer, when the Wild have some cap space, they need to hit on a few difference-making free agents. It’s not a ton of space, but Leipold says that they have already identified one or two players they want to sign and that next July 1 will feel like “Christmas.”

But does he worry Wild fans will continue to be patient when now told the plan to be a serious Cup contender is four more seasons away?

“Absolutely,” Leipold says. “We think about our fans all the time. We don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver.”

It’s happened before. The path to a championship was supposed to start on July 4, 2012, when Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed twin 13-year, $98 million contracts. They were the crown jewels of NHL free agency, and they were supposed to lead the franchise to new heights. It never happened. So three years ago, the club reset the clock. Guerin, hired in 2019, convinced Leipold it was time to cut the cord on Parise and Suter and vowed better days would follow.

Fans seemed to accept there would be short-term pain — dead cap hits as high as $14.7 million last season and this upcoming one. They’d compete, as Guerin put it, with “one hand tied behind our backs.”

But the Wild decision-makers didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be to ascend to true contender status without a full financial arsenal. That’s when Leipold, for the first time as an owner, told his GM that it was time to come up with a “five-year plan” to win a Cup.

This season, Leipold says, he expects a playoff team. But he also wants to identify which players are going to be part of a Wild team that’s going to deliver the State of Hockey a Stanley Cup.

The clock is ticking and the Wild have a lot to prove. To Kaprizov. To other free agents. To their fans, Leipold admits.

The NBA’s Timberwolves are coming off a Western Conference finals appearance. The Vikings are 5-0. The Wild can’t assume fans will stick with them forever.

“It’s about becoming a true contender,” Guerin says. “I don’t want to try to fool anybody. I don’t think we’ve been serious contenders in the past. I just don’t. And we’re trying to get there.”

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A couple years ago, then-Wild coach Dean Evason heard that Kaprizov wanted to talk.

The team was struggling, as was Kaprizov. So Evason rushed to find any statistic he could use to reassure the Russian winger he was playing him the right way. Power-play time. Minutes and usage.

But when Kaprizov arrived, with his limited English at the time, he made clear his motivation.

What can I do to help us win hockey games?

“He’s all about winning,” former teammate Alex Goligoski says. “I don’t think he has a selfish bone in his body. … He’ll do whatever it takes to win.”

Which means Kaprisov’s buy-in on “the plan” is crucial to its success.

Before arriving in the NHL, Kaprizov was long considered the best player not in the league. He was a KHL highlight machine who scored nothing but big goals. The youngest player in KHL history to reach the 100-goal mark. Five consecutive KHL All-Star Games. League leader in goal-scoring twice. A championship.

Internationally, he led the 2017 world juniors in goals and was named the tournament’s best forward. Then he led the 2018 Winter Olympics in goals, including the “Golden Goal” in overtime for the Olympic Athletes of Russia.

With the Wild, he has been everything fans imagined he could be during the five-plus years the franchise waited for him.

Kaprizov scored a breakaway goal in OT to cap a three-point game in his NHL debut in January 2021, and it was obvious he was already the first bona fide superstar in franchise history.

He went on to win the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year and sign the most lucrative contract in NHL history for a player with such little service time (55 games): a five-year, $45 million contract with a $9 million average annual value.

And since? He has rewritten the franchise record book, racking up three consecutive 40-goal seasons and 279 points. His 133 goals the past three years are tied for fifth in the NHL.

But until he signs his next contract, Wild fans and the organization will worry.

Even before last season, when Kaprizov had three years left on his contract, Leipold said his future was constantly on the team’s mind.

Leipold admits it’s still a worry.

“Am I convinced that we can (persuade him to stay)? No,” Leipold says. “Am I convinced that we will have a better offer than anybody else can do in the league? The answer is yes.

“I told you that this five-year plan is not a straight line. He’s the most important piece of our five-year plan. I think I can say that.”

Leipold says when Guerin begins serious talks with Kaprizov and his agent next offseason, the entire “plan” will be communicated to him.

“I’m confident that we have what Kirill is looking for, both in the market and in the team,” Guerin says. “When you look at what we’re building and what we’ve built, there’s a plan for long-term success.

“Most players are looking for a chance to win, and not just one time. And I know it’s really important to Kirill, and it should be.”

Guerin says now, heading into a new season, is not the time to flood the 27-year-old star with a bunch of information he doesn’t need. But they have a great relationship.

“He knows what we’re trying to do,” Guerin says. “Nobody would argue with me that he’s our best player. You have to communicate with these guys to let them know what the plan is so they can have a belief because if they don’t believe in it, then they’re not going to want to be here. And that’s not just here, that’s anywhere.”

Kaprizov says he’s a long way from thinking about extension talks.

“I have two more years now, and I just try not to think about this because it’s a season just coming now,” he says. “It’s a new year and I want to make the playoffs. But I love playing here. I just try to play hockey now and not think about the contract because I have a lot of time.”

Once upon a time, the Wild did lose their previous best player, Marian Gaborik, for nothing.

He turned down a 10-year, $80 million offer in the summer of 2008, got hurt early in the 2008-09 season, played 17 games and became untradable.

The Wild can’t afford a repeat, so they’re really going to have to do a hard sell next summer to convince Kaprizov he can win in Minnesota.

“If we’re winning and putting a good product on the ice and we’re making runs in the playoffs, I don’t think we should have to worry about him going anywhere,” teammate Ryan Hartman says.

Adds Marcus Foligno, “Kirill loves it here. He loves his teammates, loves playing in front of his fans. Kirill’s going to do whatever he can do to win, and if he sees that culture around him that has that hunger just like he does, then he’s going to be happy where he is.”

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The architect of this five-year plan, the one trusted to execute it, is Guerin.

How he handles the Kaprizov negotiations and how much he makes of “Christmas” morning free agency next summer will determine how successful this plan is.

Guerin is Leipold’s fourth GM. The long-time NHL power forward, 429-goal scorer and U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer has won four Stanley Cups, two as a player with the Devils and Penguins, two as an executive with the Penguins.

He’s not afraid to be bold and is a go-with-your-gut type of guy. Neither of his two head-coaching hires, replacing Bruce Boudreau with Evason, then tabbing John Hynes last November, included a coaching search.

The Wild haven’t won a playoff series with Guerin as GM, but he got promoted and extended in the summer of 2023, picking up the title of president of hockey operations in the process. The Parise-Suter buyouts got him years of patience. And, it turns out, a lot more. Even last year’s scandal in which Guerin was accused of verbal abuse by a long-time staffer didn’t shake Leipold’s faith.

“Billy and I are lock step in how we want to achieve the team we want in five years,” Leipold says. “Billy understands what we’re going to be looking for. Everybody does in this business. It’s a win-loss kind of thing, and we’re going to expect our team to be better. I like the moves Billy has made. He doesn’t need my approval.”

Guerin believes in his guys, and he’s put his money where his mouth is by locking up most regulars to multi-year deals. He signed veterans Foligno, Mats Zuccarello and Hartman last September, one year before they were due to be unrestricted free agents. The moves were criticized at the time. Why rush to sign those veterans, who could have been trade chips when the season went awry? In context of the five-year plan, the deals now make a little more sense because he wants them to continue to be part of building the culture and growing a contender.

Freddy Gaudreau got a five-year deal in the spring of 2023. Jake Middleton got a four-year deal this past summer, one year ahead of free agency.

If this eventually ends up in a Stanley Cup boat parade down the Mississippi River, Guerin will look like a decisive exec whose loyalty is rewarded.

“We have to show that the guys that got extended can get the job done,” Foligno says. “That’s on all of us — Hartzy, Zuccy, Gauds, me, Middsy. We want to be a part of that group alongside Bolds and Ekker (Joel Eriksson Ek) and Kirill and Fabes that can stick here and be a recipe of success.”

The Wild’s core group of players is 8-15 in the past four playoff rounds, but Guerin remains committed to them. Though his message is clear.

“I haven’t talked much about last year. I don’t like the way it went,” he said on the first day of training camp. “I don’t like a lot about it, and I want to make sure that we have urgency this year, that we are afraid to fail. This is serious. … Guys better be ready.”

Foligno says they were fragile last year, not resilient enough. They were pushed around, too. They were 0-10-1 against the top three teams in their division, Winnipeg, Dallas and Colorado.

“I would have loved to play against the team we were last year,” Hartman says. “I felt we were too easy to play against.”

Guerin has put the onus on the players. His guys.

“We didn’t rise to the occasion in big games,” Guerin says. “And if that doesn’t change, we’re gonna have to look and see what the problem really is.”

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The best-case scenario for this season’s Wild would seem to be snagging a playoff spot out of the much-more competitive Central Division and winning a playoff round.

Then they re-sign Kaprizov to a long-term deal on July 1, ensuring their biggest superstar plays most of his career in Minnesota. Then bring in some firepower in free agency. The salary cap is expected to go up to at least $92.5 million (from $88 million), so between that and the dead-cap space going away, there will be some flexibility.

Then the prospect pool, which was No. 1 in The Athletic’s 2023 pipeline rankings but has been slow in developing NHL talent, fills in any remaining gaps.

Next season will be Year 3 of that five-year plan.

“If we’re almost there, maybe it takes us a sixth year,” Leipold says. “I’m OK with that. … But we have to start with a plan and feel good about where we’re going. We have to get out of this. I don’t like not making the playoffs. It’s embarrassing.”

The fan base has loyally followed and bought into the hope. But while the Wild have remained in the middle, other franchises have torn down and rebuilt. Some have multiple Cups. Others are serious contenders or on the rise.

The rival Blackhawks have done both, winning three titles after their early 2000s rebuild and now boasting Connor Bedard as the fruits of their latest tanking.

Now, the Blackhawks — and any other team that could afford Kaprizov’s likely $12-$13 million price tag in two years — will be keeping a close eye on the Wild.

If they lost Kaprizov, would Leipold then regret forgoing a full rebuild? Would he second-guess Guerin’s decision to buy out Parise and Suter? Would he rather they had not extended contracts to a core group of players who have been unable to take the Wild on a playoff run? For now, Leipold is steadfast.

“I have to be honest with you, my DNA doesn’t allow me to (rebuild),” he says. “I can’t throw in the towel for three years to build the team to get up to two or three years after that, to win a championship. That would be living in the desert too long for me.

“And I’ve asked myself that: ‘Do I second-guess stuff?’ Absolutely. But I just can’t find myself doing it. And, honestly, I don’t think our market would like it very much if that’s what we did.”

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic. Photos: Jeff Vinnick, Michael Martin, Bruce Kluckhohn / NHLI via Getty Images)