The Minnesota Wild will face a minimum of four weeks without superstar Kirill Kaprizov after it was determined Tuesday that he requires surgery to repair his lingering lower-body injury.
Sources close to Kaprizov said the winger is scheduled to undergo surgery Friday.
Wild president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin stressed Tuesday that this is not season-ending. Four weeks from Friday is Feb. 28. If it takes, say, six weeks for Kaprizov to return, that’s March 14. The Wild would have 16 regular-season games left before the Stanley Cup playoffs begin April 19.
“We’ve been down this road before,” Guerin said in a news conference Tuesday. “It’s unfortunate. Kirill was having a Hart Trophy-type season. It’s disappointing for him. It’s disappointing for us, too, but we’ve put ourselves in a good position in the standings and the way we’re playing, and we just need to deal with the situation. It’s not the end of the world. We’re going to keep playing and continue to get better, and when Kirill’s healthy and all healed up, he’ll be back and we’ll be even better.
“Make no bones about it: We’re a better hockey team with Kirill in the lineup. There’s no arguing that, but this is the reality of professional sports and, like I said, we’ll deal with it. We’re a good team, especially when we play a certain way, and we’ll be all right.”
GO DEEPER
Wild’s Kirill Kaprizov misses practice, could be headed for surgery: Sources
Kaprizov played every game but one before the NHL’s holiday break, but when the schedule resumed Dec. 27 in Dallas, Kaprizov was not on the trip and didn’t play for a dozen games.
Guerin said Kaprizov didn’t aggravate the injury.
“He just never came around,” Guerin said. “So this is something that we feel, he feels, his agent feels, that is just necessary.”
Originally, Kaprizov was listed as day-to-day as the Wild tried to determine what exactly he was dealing with. He sought treatment with specialists, then skated for two weeks and returned to the lineup for the past three games. Surgery was not considered earlier, Guerin said.
“You never want to jump into surgery,” Guerin said. “You want to do everything you can to avoid it. It’s just invasive, and it just brings everything to a different level. But like I said: not season-ending, so that’s the good part of it.”
Because it’s not expected to be a regular-season-ending surgery, this will not be a Nikita Kucherov or Mark Stone situation where the Wild can exceed the cap during the regular season knowing Kaprizov won’t return until the start of the playoffs.
The trade deadline is March 7, but since Kaprizov is expected to return well before the playoffs and the Wild would need to be cap-compliant once he does, the team won’t be able to use his $9 million cap hit to make a move or moves before the deadline.
The Wild have such little cap space now, they’ll have to put Jonas Brodin or Kaprizov on LTIR just to afford an extra forward for the remainder of their five-game trip.
“We will do what we’re able to do with the cap space that we have (at the deadline),” Guerin said.
In other words, it’ll be up to the players inside the current locker room and with AHL Iowa to get the team through these weeks that Kaprizov is out. The good news is the Wild have no games from Feb. 9 to 21 because of the 4 Nations Face-Off.
“If there is a silver lining to any of this, that’s it,” Guerin said. “There’s pretty much a two-week break in the season, so that’s good.”
One player who really has a chance to strut his stuff with Kaprizov out is Liam Ohgren, who turned 21 on Tuesday and has no goals and two assists in five games since being recalled after Marcus Johansson was concussed.
“I’d still like to see him play a little more free,” Guerin said. “He tends to be a little robotic at times, and he’s got too much skill for that. So I’d like to see him use his speed a little bit more. Get better in scoring areas.”
While Kaprizov wasn’t showing any discernable limp after Sunday’s win in Chicago, he did look glum in the postgame locker room as he walked to the trainer’s room.
Guerin and coach John Hynes said Kaprizov is immensely disappointed because he did everything the doctors and trainers asked over the past five weeks.
Kaprizov told Hynes he was playing at only “60 percent,” and even though Kaprizov at 60 percent is better than most players in the league, Hynes said it wasn’t up to the standard Kaprizov expects to be at to help the team win “and I think that’s what bothers him the most.”
“Since he came back, he was very uncomfortable, but he was gutting through it,” Hynes said. “There’s just probably some components to his game that he truly felt were lacking, that he’s not being able to be the guy he is.
“Even on the bench at times, he was struggling to get through it. He did, and we did, everything we could to see if it would work for him, but it didn’t. So now we got to go this direction.”
Finally, it was determined Kaprizov should get this fixed now rather than continue to fight through it.
“I don’t think it’s the best thing for a player to try to gut it out in this situation, because I think you leave yourself open to other injuries,” Guerin said. “I think the best thing to do is to shut him down right now for a little while, fix the problem and then get him back to 100 percent.
“Look, it’s disappointing. You can get mad. You can be sad. You can get frustrated all you want. It doesn’t fix it. You just have to handle it. Being emotional about it doesn’t get you anywhere, so you know what? We’ve identified the problem. We’re going to get it fixed for him, and we move ahead.”
(Photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
