Some rookie stars arrive in the NHL with their own gravitational pull, knocking a franchise out of its orbit.
Minnesota Wild coach Dean Evason saw it happen first hand while with the Washington Capitals when Alex Ovechkin arrived. He was a player whose pulsating lifeforce, on and off the ice, infused every aspect of the team.
“When he first came in … my gosh, he was so much fun to be around. His excitement level on the ice had him jumping into the glass and being as excited for his teammates as he was for himself. But off the ice was the same thing: In the weight room and the dressing room, he was just a fun guy to be around,” recalled Evason.
Nearly 16 years later, Evason is seeing the same kind of impact from 23-year-old winger Kirill Kaprizov. Like Ovechkin, his boundless enthusiasm is infectious. Like Ovechkin, his production is prodigious: Kaprizov leads all rookies with 24 points in 26 games after finally coming over to North America from the KHL, six years after the Wild drafted him in the fifth round.
Like Ovechkin, his energy on and off the ice is transforming an NHL franchise. The Wild have gone from a punch-less offense to a potent one. They’ve gone from a team searching for a dynamic, signature superstar to the team of Kirill Kaprizov.
Or as he’s sometimes known, “Kirill the Thrill.” When he’s not being called “Dollar Dollar Bill Kirill,” that is.
‘Kirill the Thrill’
It’s not every rookie that gets christened with multiple nicknames the moment they arrive. Ovechkin was immediately “Ovi” and “The Great Eight.” Kaprizov has been given “Kirill the Thrill” and, quite hilariously, “Dollar Dollar Bill Kirill.”
Wild defenseman Matt Dumba helped given him the latter name for being so “money” while handling the puck. His teammates surprised Kaprizov by having shirts created with the nickname, and a sketch drawing of the rookie’s face wearing sunglasses with dollar signs on them.
“It was very cool, but it was unexpected. I heard some of the guys talk about making shirts. I walked into the locker room and everyone is wearing them. It was very cool. But it made me a little shy, even,” said Kaprizov, through a translator.
“Shy” is something not often associated with Kaprizov. For all of his on-ice exploits that have elevated the Wild to the division title race in the West, it’s the gregarious charisma he’s shown off the ice that’s surpassed the expectations of his team.
“It matters almost as much as him putting the puck in the net. That’s how much it matters,” said Wes Walz, a former Minnesota forward who is now an analyst for the team.
Walz said that when Evason picked up Kaprizov from the airport last year, the rookie’s first question was “when can I meet my teammates?”
When the Wild players met Kaprizov, they met a player with a wide smile and a willingness to engage with them, despite the limitations of his English. “He didn’t sit in a corner and not talk to anybody. There’s obviously a language barrier but he didn’t shy away,” said Evason.
Kaprizov made the leap to the NHL at an awkward and unprecedented time. He hasn’t seen much of his new city, nor many places on the road, due to COVID safety protocols for players and the truncated nature of the season. His family is back in Russia, unable to see him play in the NHL in person quite yet. “I would love to have them here. It would be great for them and great for me,” he said. “They want to come, but right now they’re going to hang out at home for a little bit, given all the COVID stuff that’s happening.”
For other young players, this change in lifestyle could be a humbling experience. But from the moment Wild general manager Bill Guerin met Kaprizov, he was confident the young player had the comportment to weather the adversity.
“He was just going to be OK regardless. He’s got enough English to get by. He’s gotten close to his teammates right away, which is important,” said Guerin. “I think it’s actually better for him that he doesn’t have another [Russian] guy on the team, who’s there just because he’s Russian. It’s forced him to get involved on his own. He’s got that personality where he wants to be involved. So he puts himself out there, and the guys love him.
“He doesn’t have the safe zone to just hang out with the Russian guy. Now he’s forced to improve his English, to get to know these guys better. I think it’s been good for him and knowing his personality, I think that’s the way he likes it.”
That said, Guerin made the offer to Kaprizov when the two met face-to-face for the first time: If he needed a Russian teammate to help him transition to North American life, the Wild would acquire one. This is an approach that has been taken by other NHL teams when bringing in young franchise stars from other parts of the world: Look no further than the Capitals acquiring Viktor Kozlov and Sergei Fedorov for a young Ovechkin, or Michael Nylander as a mentor for a young Nicklas Backstrom.
But Kaprizov declined.
“I asked him: Do you feel you need another Russian player to help you around? We would have done that,” said Guerin. “And he said, ‘Only if he helps us win.’ That right there says a lot.”
‘No cheat in his game’
The Wild knew what they had in Kaprizov before he arrived. He was one of the leading scorers in the KHL for the last four seasons, amassing 195 points in 209 games with Ufa and CSKA. Widely considered the best player in the world not playing in the NHL last season, Kaprizov has had the offensive impact the team anticipated.
“I think his ability to escape situations, where you think he’s hemmed in, you think he’s pinned up against the wall, where you think he has nowhere to go off of the rush, he seems to find a way to sneak by defenders and separate after that with his foot speed. And his passing ability is really strong obviously,” said Evason.
The remarkable thing about Kaprizov’s season thus far is that so few of his points have come on special teams: 22 of his first 24 NHL points were at even strength. Tim Stützle of the Ottawa Senators, the second-leading scorer among rookies, had 11 of 17 points at 5-on-5, for example.
“These skill guys in the NHL, the power play is their oxygen. That’s where they put up their numbers. That’s how they breathe. How they feed their kids,” said Walz. “For Kirill to be able to do the things he’s done without the power play [numbers], he’d be looking at points from another 8-10 goals.”
What’s impressed Guerin is the ferocity with which Kaprizov plays.
“We knew he had skill, but he can make something out of nothing. What’s surprised me the most is how competitive he is on things like loose pucks, and how strong he is. Honestly, he’s fearless. He doesn’t back down from anybody. I like that. I think that’s a great quality in a young player,” he said.
This tenacity is infectious when it comes from a young leading scorer.
“The way he plays the game has galvanized this team. He’s not a superstar that’s cheating behind defenseman and staying on the ice for 2-3 minutes. He’s playing the game the right way. He’s getting his offense through the concept of the team,” said Walz. “This is especially important for someone that’s new to the league. You’ve seen it before: Guy comes over from the KHL, he’s floating out there, trying to worry about his stats. He’s giving up goals on the other end because he’s cheating. That doesn’t work. The fact that he plays the way he plays is remarkable.”
This a common theme about Kaprizov, and it’s in contrast to the way Ovechkin was perceived as a young player. The Capitals star was seen as a goal scorer first and literally everything else about being a well-rounded player second, which was a perception he still battles to this day despite it’s having become a misconception years ago. Kaprizov has earned no such label.
“There’s very little cheat in his game. Very little,” said Guerin. “That’s the thing: He wants to win. This is not him putting on a show for his personal statistics. He wants to win. That’s what’s important to him.”
Thanks to Kaprizov — and an assist from fellow rookie Kaapo Kahkonen, whose goaltending has stabilized the position — the Wild are winning. They’re 17-8-1 and second in the West, with a .673 points percentage that would be the highest in franchise history if it holds.
“He’s a genuine, really good kid that just loves to play hockey,” said Philadelphia Flyers GM Chuck Fletcher of Kaprizov.
He would know. He’s the reason Kaprizov is a member of the Minnesota Wild.
“I texted Chuck Fletcher when [Kaprizov] started playing,” said Guerin. “And I said, ‘Chuck, you guys drafted an unbelievable player. And we needed him.'”
Drafting Kirill
Fletcher had been general manager of the Wild for six season when the 2015 NHL draft arrived. They had picks in every round except the third, which they used to acquire goalie Devan Dubnyk in January, and the fifth, which was traded to Columbus in March.
“That was a great draft, that ’15 draft. It was probably the next greatest draft after 2003. Everybody was getting good players in every round. I just wanted to say that. We got some good players, but a lot of other teams did too. It’s not like we were geniuses or anything.”
Fletcher and his player personnel team had Kaprizov rated as a mid-second-round pick. Brent Flahr, the draft whiz who is now Fletcher’s assistant GM in Philadelphia, was a vocal advocate for drafting Kaprizov.
“We liked his speed and skill, and we felt we needed to add more of it. We had a lot of high-end players, but you’re always looking for that elite guy,” recalled Fletcher.
While Minnesota’s 2015 draft haul may end up being most notable for Kaprizov, it was the Wild’s first pick that received the most attention. They wanted a center, and Joel Eriksson Ek was the best available at No. 20. It’s a pick that’s aging well, with Eriksson Ek being chatted up as a Selke Trophy candidate; but at the time, Wild fans were more frustrated that their team didn’t select native son Brock Boeser than appreciating the virtues of their new young Swede.
Kaprizov was on the board in the second round when the Wild’s turn to pick arrived. Minnesota instead selected rising U.S. development program star Jordan Greenway in the second round at 50th overall.
Instead of Greenway, some at the Wild table wanted goalie Daniel Vladar, who would go at No 75 to the Boston Bruins, making his NHL debut with them last season. Focusing on a goalie, Minnesota risked losing Kaprizov again by selecting Ales Stezka with their fourth-round pick (No. 111 overall) — a goalie who is currently in the Czech Republic’s second-tier league.
As the draft rolled into its fifth round, the chances increased that someone would take a flier on Kaprizov. The Wild had two options: Get aggressive and acquire a fifth-rounder, or hope that Kaprizov lasted until the sixth round. So Fletcher made a call to Boston.
Don Sweeney was working his first draft as Bruins general manager, and has subsequently said that it was “a steep learning curve.” That’s putting the Bruins’ whiff a bit kindly: The Bruins had three straight first-rounders from pick Nos. 13-15 and selected defenseman Jakub Zboril, left wing Jake DeBrusk and right wing Zachary Senyshyn directly ahead of New York Islanders star Mathew Barzal, Winnipeg Jets goal-scorer Kyle Connor and Ottawa Senators do-everything defenseman Thomas Chabot.
That infamous run gets all of the attention, but let it also be said that Sweeney traded his 2015 fifth-rounder (No. 135 overall) for Minnesota’s fifth-rounder in 2016. One of those picks became defenseman Cameron Clarke. The other became Kirill Kaprizov.
(The even bigger “what if” from the 2015 draft: The Wild don’t get the pick, both Boston and Calgary pass, and we’re watching Kaprizov on the left wing of either Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin this season after the Penguins select him at No. 137.)
“We got lucky, based on where we had him on our list and how we had him graded out, to get a pick and grabbed him,” said Fletcher. “You knew he’d be good, but you didn’t know he was going to be this.”
How does Kaprizov fall to the fifth round? In 2015, the NHL was still transforming from a league looking to draft offensive behemoths to one that wouldn’t auto-pass on a highly skilled forward just because he was 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds. The other question was something that’s haunted the NHL draft for years: When, and if, Kaprizov would ever leave Russia.
Fletcher would spend the rest of his tenure as Wild general manager trying to do just that, staying in contact with the player and his reps. At one point, it looked like Kaprizov would make the leap for the 2018-19 NHL season, as he had only one year left on his KHL deal. Then the unexpected happened: He fired his agents and signed a contract extension with CSKA Moscow, a.k.a. the “Red Army Team.” Fletcher and Kaprizov’s new agent, Dan Milstein, went to Russia to try and find a way to get him out of the deal — which paid Kaprizov around $1 million (U.S.) per season — to no avail.
“There were things going on behind the scenes that we couldn’t control,” said Fletcher. “It was what it was.”
Fletcher was informed in April 2018 that his contract wasn’t going to be renewed, after the Wild lost in the opening round of the playoffs for the third straight season.
He’ll always be the general manager that brought Kirill Kaprizov to the franchise. But had Kaprizov jumped earlier, is there any part of Fletcher that believes he could still be the general manager in Minnesota?
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, chuckling. “It may have shifted things a bit.”
Kaprizov’s arrival has certainly shifted things in Minnesota.
Line changes
Evason said the language barrier hasn’t been too much of a hinderance with his star rookie. “In hockey terms, he does not need a translator. Especially like with video, just showing and pointing and and talking. We’ve mentioned a few times that it’s difficult in groups obviously. Maybe he doesn’t feel comfortable to speak. But he understands very well, speaks very well, when you talk to him 1-on-1, when it’s more of a casual situation. Sitting down with video, he’s 100% engaged and in the bench it’s the same thing,” he said.
It’s been more of an issue with Kaprizov and his linemates, like Norway native Mats Zuccarello, whom Kaprizov said “only knows bad words in Russian.”
The language barrier has had some unexpected benefits in preventing Kaprizov from buying his own hype. He doesn’t pay attention to English-language sports sites because he doesn’t read the language well enough yet. He has seen the coverage of his NHL exploits in Russian-language media while trying to keep track of friends playing in the KHL.
“I didn’t go into the season having any expectations or any thoughts or goals,” he said. “I just wanted to play my best. And if I play my best, I make my teammates better.”
That he has. His line with Zuccarello and center Victor Rask is averaging 5.56 goals per 60 minutes of 5-on-5 play, generating a goals for percentage higher than 70% while on the ice together. Kaprizov has helped take two of the franchise’s most maligned players and created one of the league’s top lines.
Guerin was always confident that Zuccarello would rebound after posting his lowest points-per-game average (0.57) in a season that saw him play at least 65 games. He had spent nine campaigns with the New York Rangers before signing a five-year deal in Minnesota as an unrestricted free agent. Guerin figured with a year of acclimation and better health, he could be the same tenacious offensive force that earned him that $30 million deal. “There’s a lot of pressure when you sign as a free agent. He had a tough adjustment,” said Guerin.
The general manager doesn’t mince words when it comes to Rask. “He was treated poorly here from the day he arrived here. That’s on us,” said Guerin, whose predecessor Paul Fenton traded Nino Niederreiter to the Carolina Hurricanes for Rask. “When he was out of the lineup. When he was in the lineup, he barely played. That was unfair. We told him this year that he was going to get a chance and make the most of it, and he has.”
Evason believes the fast start “sure didn’t hurt” Kaprizov and his confidence.
“But what we’ve seen from him, it’s not his offensive production he’s excited about: It’s the team having success. Whether he scores a goal or someone else does, he’s just as excited,” said the coach.
Of course, “goal-scoring” and “the Minnesota Wild” have sometimes seemed like mutually exclusive concepts before Kaprizov.
The Wild are boring no more
Jacques Lemaire, whose defensive predilections — and neutral-zone trap — earned him a Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils in 1995, coached the Wild for the first eight seasons of their existence. Walz played for him from 2000-2008, and the franchise was 29th in the league in offense during that span (2.47 goals per game). Despite the presence of star forward Marian Gaborik, the Wild were seen as one of the most tedious offensive teams in the league.
“To be perfectly honest, I think that stereotype about the Wild in the early years was exactly the case. That was the only way we had a chance to compete,” said Walz.
Even as the Wild added some big-name offensive talent in players like Zach Parise and Eric Staal through the years, that label has remained affixed to them. But Walz sees it finally being shed thanks to Kaprizov.
“I know the perception nationally is that we’re a tight-checking team. It’s been something we’ve been trying to shake for years. Now, with Kirill around and scoring, maybe that stigma finally leaves. And that’s a good thing,” he said.
Even at the height of his powers, Gaborik never conjured the type of mania that Kaprizov has created in just 26 games in the NHL. The highlight reel. The status as Calder Trophy favorite. The nicknames and the T-shirts that go along with them.
He’s franchise player and, beyond that, an attraction in a market that needed energizing. To be sure, the Wild do very well in average attendance when fans are permitted in the building. They averaged 17,472 fans per game with at a 97.3% capacity last season. But their sellout streak ended in Oct. 2019 after six seasons, and the team hasn’t made it past the first round of the playoffs since 2015. It’s a blessing that Minneapolis-St. Paul is a hockey hotbed, but it’s also a curse for the Wild that its means there are many other options to watch the sport than paying to see the local NHL team.
An attraction like Kaprizov could be worth the price of admission, however.
Guerin acknowledges that Kaprizov is going to help shatter the “same old Wild” stereotype about their offense, and that he’ll be a gate attraction for the fans.
“But we need this kid because he helps us win. That’s the key. That’s all that matters to us,” said Guerin. “Look, I get it. He’s popular. He’s going to be a star. He’s great for the market. He’s great for shifting the perception of our team. But the bottom line is that we want to win more games than we lose. We want to win a championship. And he’s going to be a big piece of that puzzle.”