Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on the 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – The Only Thing Bigger Than Hischier Will Be Kaprizov’s Contract episode, on Kirill Kaprizov, Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold’s prior comments about doing whatever it takes to get it done, and will Kaprizov just wait for more.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
“Now, the short-term, that’s the bigger question right now. What happens in the interim? Now, one of the questions that’s been asked around the league a lot is, ‘okay, Kaprizov said no to eight times 16, did he give the Wild a number?’ They would say, ‘Okay, if you put this in front of me, I’m signing it.’ Or did the Wild ask him, ‘okay, you’re not going to take this, what will you take? Give us the number.’
And as far as I can tell, that has not happened. That there’s, that there’s at least in the sense that there’s no magic number out there for Kaprizov now, that he said, or his representative said, ‘Put this in front of me and I’ll sign it.’
Okay. Now, the one of the dangers of this one is, nobody’s really commenting here, but I think this story is so explosive, and there’s so much talk about it around the league, I think if there was a number on the table,then, I think we’d know about it. So I’m saying right now that that’s not there as far as I know.
Um, I think that one of the things that happened in a couple podcasts ago, you talked about it with Craig Leipold, the owner, saying, ‘We’ll do whatever it takes to get this done. We can sign him to the biggest check.’ I think there’s some people sitting here wondering if Kaprisov and (agent Paul) Theofanus are simply sitting there saying, how far can we push this?
Will we get to the point where the Wild are negotiating against themselves? Do they simply keep raising the number? Okay, we didn’t get it done at 16. What about 16 and a half? What about 17? Like, I don’t know exactly what the number would be here, but there are plenty of people out there who are good negotiators, who will say, if you have someone who says that about you publicly, sometimes the best thing you could do is wait for them to keep making offers.
But you know, if you’re the Wild, you have to sit back there and think and say, ‘All right, is this really the best thing for us to do? Does it make sense for us to go any further?
You know, it’s sort of like dating, right, Kyle? You know, sometimes you ask somebody out, maybe they say no, and you’re thinking, okay. You know, some people are like, Oh, okay. They said no, I’m moving on to somebody else. But some people are like, all right, they said no this time, I’m gonna keep trying. I don’t, I really like this person, I’m not giving up that easy. Like, thank God that Dana finally said yes to you. I could only imagine how many times you had to ask her out before she would say yes.
But let’s, the question is, are the Wild going to do that with Kaprizov. And, you know, I recognize that Kaprizov is not like a lot of other players. He’s pretty unique. He’s one of the best players in the league.
So, and you know, one of the things that I’ve talked about Kyle is the book, The Ball Truth by David Falk, the old basketball agent, and he talks about how some players are more valuable in their situations than others.
Like you might look at Kaprizov and say, ‘All right, I don’t think he’s an $18 million player or $20 million player.’ But he’s so valuable in Minnesota that the Wild might have to look at it and say, ‘Well, maybe he’s not an $18 million player in Florida, but he might be an $18 million player to us.’
I think that’s one of the biggest decisions Minnesota has to make. Are they moving or not? And I think you, right now, I think they’re emotional. But I think you have to sit back, really take a deep breath and decide, are we, are we being smart by increasing our offer?
Like, I do remember one, one GM told me about a story this weekend, and he said it wasn’t a player as good as Kaprizov, but they were going after him in free agency, and we kept on raising our offer, and the player kept on hemming and hawing. And finally, they just said, like, he doesn’t really want to be here. If, if he’s going to be here, he’s only here for the money, and that’s going to be a disaster for everyone involved.
So I actually think the biggest decision is Minnesota’s.”
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