Kirill Kaprizov is the Wild’s best player, the franchise’s only true superstar and an absolute key to the rest of this season.
He’s also played just three games since Christmas and zero since late January. To make matters worse, the Wild don’t have a definitive timetable for his return from injury.
The same goes for the return of the injured Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin, also two of the Wild’s most important players.
All three players are essentially considered “week to week” in their injury progression. In one sense, that’s at least better than the alternative of being out for the season.
In another sense, though, it puts the Wild in the worst of both worlds as they navigate the rest of the season.
The NHL trade deadline is Friday. The Wild already added Gustav Nyquist in a recent trade for a 2026 second-round pick.
The end of the regular season is a little less than six weeks away. Somewhere in between, all three players are expected back — but the uncertainty means that is not a guarantee.
As a result, the salary cap-strapped Wild are extremely limited in what else they can do — up to and including using a strange NHL cap rule to make their team extra strong for the playoffs, something Sarah McLellan and I talked about on Wednesday’s “Daily Delivery” podcast.
