How is Tampa of all teams a template? They give all their young players short bridge deals because that’s all they can afford in their cap crunch. They don’t get burned after the deals are up because players want to stay on the unstoppable Cup winning juggernaut in the tax-friendly Sunny Florida.
Unless you’re arguing any NHL team can get players like Kucherov and Point signed to 8 year/9.5m deals when then they are one year from UFA, but that’s a ludicrous argument.
Saying the Wild shouldn’t be concerned about Kaprizov hitting arbitration when he will have only been on the team for two year or three years, and likely won nothing while not playing with future Hall of Famers (so not Tampa), is magical thinking. Sorry, you can’t complain about the risks of around performance and then hand waive this more concrete one away.
And lol on agreeing with the Wild getting “2 years to fix any cap issues” actually means anything considering what their cap situation is.
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That ain’t a two year thing and you can’t “fix” it. (I think some Wild fans might have mentioned their cap situation in this thread before, once or twice or 97 times before.)