Wild in good position despite key injuries, salary cap issues as playoffs near

MANALAPAN, Fla. -- All things being equal, the Minnesota Wild are in a good position.

At 38-25-5, they're fourth in the Central Division with 14 games remaining, including against the Seattle Kraken at home on Wednesday (9:30 p.m. ET; FDSNNOX, MAX, TNT, SN360, TVAS). They hold the first wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Western Conference, leading the Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues by six points. And they're coming off a 3-1 win against the Los Angeles Kings on Monday.

"I'm very confident in our team," general manager Bill Guerin said Tuesday at the NHL GMs meetings. "I'm very happy with the way that they're playing. The guys are doing the right things."

He'd be happier if they were healthy. The Wild would obviously be better too. But that's the adversity they're dealing with and trying to play through.

It's taken a toll.

They're playing without forward Kirill Kaprizov, who leads them with 23 goals in 37 games; their No. 1 center, Joel Eriksson Ek; and their No. 1 defenseman, Jonas Brodin.

Kaprizov has been out with a lower-body injury that required surgery. He has missed 18 straight games and 30 of the past 33. Eriksson Ek also has a lower-body injury that has kept him out of the past 11 games. They're both on injured reserve.

Brodin has missed eight consecutive games with a lower-body injury.

It does not appear any of them are close to returning to the lineup, and Guerin won't speculate on it either.

"You start giving timelines, you can give false hope," Guerin said.

On top of the injuries, Minnesota is still operating with a nearly $15 million NHL salary cap charge for buying out the remaining four seasons of the contracts of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise in 2021.

The cap charge drops to $1.6 million next season, but the Wild were hamstrung leading up the NHL Trade Deadline on March 7 because of the salary cap implications and the fact that they're still hopeful Kaprizov can come off long-term injured reserve before the end of the season.

They must have the salary cap space to activate Kaprizov, which prevented them from doing much before the deadline beyond acquiring forward Gustav Nyquist in a trade with the Nashville Predators on March 1 for a second-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft.

"We don't talk about it," Guerin said. "We don't use it as an excuse, if we had this or we had that, but that's a big hit and then you deal with the injuries that we've dealt with. All of that stuff taken into account, I think our team is performing very well, coaches and players alike."

The Wild, though, have dipped in the second half of the season.

They were two points behind the Winnipeg Jets for first place in the Central after a 6-4 win against the St. Louis Blues on Jan. 7, their 41st game. They were scoring an average of 3.05 goals per game and allowing 2.66.

Since then, the Wild have gone 12-14-1 in 27 games, scoring 2.19 goals per game and allowing 3.11. They are four points behind the third-place Colorado Avalanche.

"It seems we're just in one of those times where we're having a really hard time scoring goals," Guerin said. "In our situation, when you lose Kaprizov and you lose Eriksson Ek up front, yeah, that hurts you offensively, but we can't let that be a distraction or an excuse. We have to find different ways of scoring. Our power play has got to be better. I think we can do a little bit better job of getting to the net front and getting ugly goals. But we've put ourselves in a good spot. There's not that many games left but we just have to play a certain way right now."

The right now is all that matters to the Wild, but Guerin has his eyes on the offseason and the potential for what could be available with the buyout cap charges from Suter and Parise going down so significantly.

"It's part of our building process," Guerin said. "This isn't like something that we've just been chewing off of. This has been our plan. We are planning on taking another step over the summer. It's part of our process."

That said, the offseason, specifically July 1, when the free agent market opens, will not exactly be like Christmas morning to the Wild.

Defenseman Brock Faber's new eight-year, $68 million contract ($8.5 million average annual value) will go into effect next season and eat into some of the available cap space.

Kaprizov will be entering the last year of his five-year, $45 million contract ($9 million AAV), which means Guerin and the Wild will have to be cognizant of what the forward will want in a new deal that would begin with the 2026-27 season.

Center Marco Rossi can become a restricted free agent this offseason, coming off his entry-level contract.

But the Wild will finally have some cap space available to them, some wiggle room to continue to build on what they already have in place.

"You have to be very careful because July 1 can be a day of mistakes," Guerin said. "If we can hold ourselves accountable, continue to operate the way we've operated but just have more flexibility, we will hopefully make good decisions and right ones. But it's going to be a time where organizationally we make a step."

For now, the next step is a game against Seattle, one of 14 remaining during the climb to the playoffs for a team hoping to get some key players back in time to make some noise.

Their GM is a believer.

"We've been beaten up by injuries, but I feel good," Guerin said. "It's grinding and it's testing our fortitude, but I'm happy with where they are."