Kirill Kaprizov is walking into a new kind of responsibility this season.
For the first time in his NHL career, the Minnesota Wild star will start a year without Mats Zuccarello beside him. That changes the look of the top line, but it also changes Kaprizov’s place in the room.
Zuccarello was never just a winger riding shotgun with the team’s best player. He was a guide, a friend and, in Kaprizov’s words, a “big brother” figure when the Russian winger arrived in Minnesota for the 2020-21 season.
Now the Wild are hoping Maxim Shabanov can step into Zuccarello’s spot on the ice. But there’s another part of this transition that matters just as much: Kaprizov may be the one best positioned to replace what Zuccarello meant away from the puck.
Shabanov has already created buzz in camp, and he’ll get the first crack at skating on Kaprizov’s line. The comparisons to Zuccarello make sense from a hockey standpoint, but the more interesting parallel might be what Kaprizov can do for a young player trying to settle in a new country. That’s the role Zuccarello once filled for him.
Kaprizov’s path to Minnesota started in the 2015 NHL Draft, but he didn’t arrive in America until the summer of 2020. According to The Athletic’s Michael Russo, Kaprizov said general manager Bill Guerin flew him into the country and the team invited him to dinner even though he wouldn’t debut until the next season. That early welcome helped set the tone, and Zuccarello quickly became one of the people Kaprizov trusted most.
Zuccarello helped him with English. He invited him over for dinner. He also helped ease the pressure that came with being the player everyone wanted to save the franchise, which mattered just as much as anything that happened on the ice.
Their chemistry was obvious in the numbers, too. Of Kaprizov’s 230 career goals, Zuccarello assisted on 102 of them. Minnesota leaned on that connection for years, and the Wild now move on after choosing a different direction this offseason, one aimed at a more downhill, attacking style.
“It’s just part of the hockey. It happens,” Kaprizov said via Russo on Thursday.
Somebody signs. Somebody don’t sign and change teams.
It’s a lot of business and a lot of times it happens. I just want to talk with him in the future and stay good friends, and just I hope he plays good there and [I] want to watch him this year.”
The roster move leaves a real hole. Zuccarello scored 118 goals and totaled 389 points in seven seasons with Minnesota, and the team spent camp trying to sort out how to replace that production. Kaprizov’s eight-year, $136 million contract helps on one level, but it does not erase what the Wild lost.
Shabanov arrives with his own resume. He played last season with the New York Islanders, where the year went sideways.
In 44 games on the second line, he had five goals and 18 points, and injuries made it worse. An early upper-body issue and a significant lower-body injury cost him 12 games in March.
The Islanders then declined the chance to tender him last offseason.
Before that, though, he showed plenty in the KHL. In his final season with Traktor Chelyabinsk in 2024-25, Shabanov scored 23 goals and finished with 67 points.
Kaprizov sees the talent. After Minnesota’s first practice of the season, he described Shabanov as fast and skilled, while also pointing to how much a better situation could matter.
“He’s pretty skilled. He’s fast,” Kaprizov said.
“When I talk with him, I see last year, it was a little but [of a] tough year for him. …It was up and down.
I think just have confidence feeling the game. Get some more time on the ice and have more chances, stuff like this, he can be a really good player.
He’s already a really good player because he was one of the best players in the KHL two years in a row. He’s really good in skill and [a] good skater [with] smart, nice vision.”
The Wild still need the on-ice chemistry to click. But if Kaprizov can help Shabanov settle in the way Zuccarello once helped him, Minnesota may find the best version of the replacement it’s looking for.
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