Wild Report Cards 2023-24: Kirill Kaprizov – The Hockey Writers – Minnesota Wild

It’s time for the Minnesota Wild’s final player report card, which means their star, Kirill Kaprizov, is up for critique. While the team may have had a disappointing end to the season due to missing out on the postseason, Kaprizov overcame some obstacles. At the beginning of the season, he struggled to recover fully from an injury he had faced at the end of the season. 

Once he was back to normal, he was hit with another injury that caused him to miss seven games. However, this time around, he didn’t take long to recover and was tallying points almost immediately. In this article, we’ll look at a rough part of his game and a strong part of his game and come up with an overall grade for his season. We’ll start with his high giveaways and move on from there. 

Kaprizov Struggles With Turnovers

When a player handles the puck as much as a player like Kaprizov, he will automatically have more turnovers. He carries the puck more often, and that comes with more risk. However, he had 73 turnovers in 75 games played, which is too high. Of course, other high scorers like Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon have high giveaways, but Kaprizov can be better. 

He’s a great puck handler, and some turnovers were just the puck slipping off his stick because he was trying to do too much. It’s good he wants to take risks, but losing the puck to the opposing team should be limited as much as possible. Clearly, he earns a little slack because, at times, he was the only player truly trying, but some of his turnovers led to goals against, and their team struggled to make any comebacks. 

This next season, the Wild need Kaprizov to continue taking risks and use his strong puck-handling skills but avoid the opposing players. If he can duck and dodge a little more often and protect the puck, he’ll have fewer turnovers. He’s capable of doing this; he just needs to be more careful and watch his passes, especially when he’s on the ice with his best buddy, Mats Zuccarello. 

Kaprizov and Zuccarello are often in their own little world when they’re on the ice together, to the point they only pass to each other, which also caused passes that were predicted by the other team. Hopefully, they can fix this if they’re paired together this coming season, and Kaprizov will have fewer turnovers. 

Kaprizov Continues Scoring Power

Whenever Wild fans hear the name Kaprizov, goal scoring is the first thing that pops into their heads. Over the last few seasons, he’s been a member of the Wild; he’s found some very interesting ways to score goals, and once he gets going, he’s hard to stop. He hasn’t quite hit his true potential yet due to injuries and not having that perfect line combination, but he’s close. 

Even after all of the obstacles he faced this past season, he scored 46 goals, just one shy of his career high of 47, and 50 assists for 96 points in 75 games played. He was even able to contribute some defensively, which he hadn’t done a lot of in the past. He threw his body around 55 times and blocked the puck 38 times. He’s been steadily improving his defensive skills since he joined the Wild, and this past season, it truly showed. 

This past season, Kaprizov found a way to start scoring as soon as the season started, and hopefully, he can do the same this coming season. The Wild will need to rely on him a lot this season, and they’ll need him to find a way to beat his career-high of 108 points if they want to get back to the postseason. 

Kaprizov’s Overall Grade

The ending of this past season was difficult for most of the Wild players, and while a few found a way to step up and improve their offense, Kaprizov really stood out. For this reason, he is the only Wild player who got higher than a B despite not having a postseason. He earned an A- due to his ability to overcome his injury problems and find a way to lead the scoring despite struggling for a lot of the season. 

Related: Under-The-Radar 30-Goal Scorers From the 2023-24 NHL Season

He’s a player others on the team can learn from in terms of work ethic, just like Joel Eriksson Ek. Hopefully, he can have an injury-free season and show everyone his true abilities free of restraint. It’ll be interesting to see how he steps up this coming season and if he can get the Wild back into the postseason.