Bill Guerin has already tried this play once, and the Wild are hoping it works again with their biggest star.
Kirill Kaprizov enters the season with the weight of Minnesota’s expectations on him, even after a year that still looked strong on paper. He finished tied for fourth in the NHL with 45 goals and 14th with 89 points last season, but that production never quite matched the feeling around him.
For a player who signed what was then the largest contract in league history last September, the Wild and their fans wanted more than numbers. They wanted a nightly force.
According to The Athletic’s Michael Russo, Guerin addressed that directly after the season. He met with Kaprizov and “told him he wanted more dominance on a night-to-night basis.”
That message landed. Russo reported that Kaprizov agreed with the assessment, then spent the offseason training in his hometown of Novokuznetsk and arrived at camp in tremendous shape.
That kind of straight talk has already paid off once for Minnesota.
Bill Guerin may have found the secret to unlocking another Wild star
Matt Boldy’s development followed a similar path, though at a different stage of his career. After debuting in the 2021-22 season, Boldy put up 46 goals and 102 points in his first 128 NHL games, but consistency remained the issue.
The clearest sign of what he could become came late in the 2023 season. At 21, Boldy caught fire with 15 goals and 23 points over the Wild’s final 19 games, helping fuel a push that looked like it might lead somewhere. Then the playoffs arrived, and he faded hard, finishing with just three points in a six-game loss to the Dallas Stars.
“Not good enough,” Boldy said via the Pioneer Press’s Dane Mizutani. “I don’t think I played well.
That’s my opinion. It just wasn’t what it needed to be, and obviously it sucks. ..
It’s another thing to learn from. I don’t want to let it happen again.”
Guerin had already been frustrated by Boldy’s playoff showing the year before, when he had just one point in a six-game loss to the St. Louis Blues. He made that clear both publicly and behind closed doors.
“He’s got to change certain things in his game,” Guerin said. “It’s a different game in the playoffs.
It’s just different. I think a lot of people get frustrated with that in hockey.
I think it’s something that makes hockey great. That is a whole different ballgame [in the playoffs].
…You look at the goals that are scored. There’s not a lot of pretty goals.”
Boldy’s results the next year were good, not great: 29 goals and 69 points, while the Wild missed the playoffs. But the leap came after that. Over the 2024-25 season, he became Minnesota’s most reliable scorer, finishing with 27 goals and 73 points, then set new career highs last season with 42 goals and 85 points.
The steadiness mattered as much as the totals. Boldy picked up a point in 49 of the Wild’s 82 games and scored in 34 of them.
That carried into the playoffs, where he had a point in five games and a goal in four during Minnesota’s six-game series against Dallas. His second-round numbers against Colorado dipped to one goal and four points, but the broader picture is clear: after Guerin’s message at the end of the 2022-23 season, Boldy became one of the Wild’s most dependable players and, as the source material puts it, a potential dark horse Hart Trophy candidate.
That’s the template Minnesota hopes Kaprizov can follow.
Kaprizov is not Boldy. He’s the franchise leader with 245 goals, the Wild’s most explosive player, and one of the most recognizable names in the NHL. But last season still left a sense of unfinished business.
The best version of Kaprizov showed up early. Through the first 34 games of the 2024-25 season, he scored 23 goals and totaled 50 points, putting himself in the Hart Trophy conversation. A lower body injury derailed that run, and he never quite looked the same after that.
Minnesota has tried to shake things up around him, too. The Wild moved on from longtime linemate and mentor Mats Zuccarello, and Russo reported the hope is that Max Shabanov can help steer Kaprizov away from the “East-West” style he played with Zuccarello and toward a more aggressive approach that creates more chances to score or set up teammates.
The lineup around him is deeper now as well, with Kaprizov playing alongside Boldy, Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber. In past seasons, the sense was that Kaprizov had to carry the offense almost by himself. Now Minnesota has more star power around him, and if gambles like Shabanov and Bobby Brink work out, the Wild believe that can only help.
At $17 million per season once his contract kicks in, the bar is obvious. Minnesota needs the dominant Kaprizov, not just the productive one. And after seeing what a blunt conversation did for Boldy, Guerin is betting the same approach can pull more out of his biggest star.
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Kaprizov Faces A Huge Wild Test Without His Trusted Running Mate
Kirill Kaprizov came back to Minnesota for training camp facing a very different setup than the one that helped define so much of his Wild career. After six seasons alongside Mats Zuccarello, the winger is now adjusting to life without his longtime running mate following Zuccarellos move to the Los Angeles Kings, leaving Kaprizov to build chemistry with a new mix that includes Russian newcomer Maxim Shabanov and Ryan Hartman.
For the Wild, the change puts added attention on how quickly Kaprizov can settle in with fresh linemates and keep the offense humming. Kaprizov has already spoken positively about Shabanovs skill, and he also made clear he wants to keep his friendship with Zuccarello intact even as their paths split on the ice. The on-ice partnership is gone, but the personal bond remains a thread worth watching as Minnesota opens a new chapter around its star. [Read more 🡒]