The Wild have officially entered the dead zone this season, a two-year stretch during which the team carries $14.7 million in dead salary cap space, the result of buying out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.
The Wild will start the regular season this week about $818,000 under the $83.5 million salary cap and it’s been a major topic of conversation during training camp because it made it nearly impossible to promote a forward to the NHL roster out of training camp.
Instead, the Wild head into Thursday’s regular-season opener against Florida at Xcel Energy Center with two open roster spots, despite losing top-four defenseman Jared Spurgeon to an injury that could cost him weeks.
Releasing Parise and Suter with four years left on their identical 13-year, $98 million contracts in July 2021 already has helped the Wild, freeing enough salary burden to sign center Joel Eriksson Ek to an eight-year, $42 million contract extension, for instance. It also will cost the Wild another $14.7 million in dead cap charges next season.
The team’s big offseason moves were trading a seventh-round draft pick for Pat Maroon and extending goaltender Filip Gustavsson for three seasons and $11.25 million. But the way the Wild’s roster is constructed, this season should be the one hampered most by those buyouts.
General manager Bill Guerin’s decision, and ability, to sign key forwards Ryan Hartman, Marcus Foligno and Mats Zuccarello to multi-year extensions this fall helped a great deal because it puts the team on pace to start next season with most of its core intact and still well under, even with the dead space, the projected salary cap of around $87 million.
“I feel really good about this. I do,” Guerin said after signing Hartman to a three-year, $12 million extension that begins next season. The team signed Zuccarello (two years, $8.25 million) and Foligno (four years, $16 million) on Sept. 29.
The Wild now have nine forwards, five defensemen and Gustavsson signed next season for about $75 million.
The NHL expects the cap to rise despite issues with regional sports network Bally Sports, which as part of a reorganizational bankruptcy for Diamond Sports Group, is attempting to reduce scheduled rights payments to 18 NHL clubs, including the Wild, which has two years left on its deal with Bally Sports North.
The NHL cap has gone down only once, after the 2005-06 lockout, and stayed flat only twice, in 2021-22 and 2022-23 as part of the fallout from the COVID season. Commissioner Gary Bettman told the Board of Governors on Oct. 4 he expects the cap to be between $87 million and $88 million.
“I’m anticipating it going up,” Guerin said last Saturday. “I hope I’m right about that.” Owner Craig Leipold said the same during his preseason meeting with reporters on Sept. 28.
If so, the Wild could have as much as $12 million to fill six roster spots, and some of those could be taken by prospects — such as forward Sammy Walker, defenseman Carson Lambos and goaltender Jesper Wallstedt — making less than $900,000 a year.
For now, though, there is a legitimate pinch.
Spurgeon is unavailable after suffering an upper body injury in the penultimate preseason game Oct. 5 in Chicago, and unless he is placed on long-term injured reserve, the Wild receive no cap relief. Dakota Mermis, a late cut with an NHL contract worth $775,000, is the only viable replacement at AHL Iowa.
That will start changing pretty quickly because every day a player isn’t on the Wild’s roster — whether he’s on another NHL team or in the minors — his cap hit gets smaller.
That’s because every day of the regular season that passes — 192 for league accounting purposes — a player’s cap hit drops by the amount he made, or would have made for minor leaguers, that day in the NHL. Walker, for instance, can’t be on the roster right now because his $855,000 NHL salary doesn’t fit under the cap.
But after 20 days, that cap hit goes down to about $766,000. Halfway through the season, that would go down to about $436,000. Likewise for any player the Wild might add through a trade.
It’s called salary cap accrual, but that’s a misnomer. As long as the Wild keep this roster intact, they’ll be $818,000 under the cap. But the longer the season goes, the more players they’ll be able to fit into that space because all the contracts will be prorated for the rest of the season.
Even so, this season’s success will come down to the success, and health, of the Wild team that takes the ice on Thursday night.
Opening Night Roster
Forwards: Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, Marcus Foligno, Pat Maroon, Brandon Duhaime, Marco Rossi, Connor Dewar, Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman, Frederick Gaudreau, Marcus Johansson, Kirill Kaprizov
Defensemen: Calen Addison, Jon Merrill, Jake Middleton, Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin, Alex Goligoski, Jared Spurgeon
Goaltenders: Marc-Andre Fleury, Filip Gustavsson
