Wild 2025-26 Report Cards: Kirill Kaprizov

The start of the NHL season is just over a month away, and that means days will go by a little faster now than they did a month ago. There still hasn’t been any big news related to the Minnesota Wild in relation to Quinn Hughes and his contract when this article was written, but hopefully that’ll come sooner rather than later. We have one final report card to get through before we move to all the preseason items to discuss. 

That final player is, of course, the Wild’s point leader for the majority of the season: Kirill Kaprizov. He did miss a little time with an injury late in the season, but he bounced back right away. In this article, we’ll take a look at his regular-season performance and his efforts in the postseason to come up with an overall grade. 

Kaprizov has Decent Season

Kirill Kaprizov had what many would consider a decent season, but he was expected to do better. He played in 78 games through the season; a couple of those were missed due to a lower-body injury late in the season and a couple were due to resting him for the postseason. In the games he did play, he recorded 45 goals plus set up 44 others for 89 points. Again, somewhat impressive, but given it’s Kaprizov and he’s done more in the past, it could’ve been more. 

He’s not known to be an overly physical player, but he does use his body at times, and he threw his body around for 52 hits. He didn’t forget about playing defense either as he got in front of the puck and blocked 27 shots. Both are decent numbers for his style of play, which is primarily offense, obviously, but a team can always use more blocked shots. 

“I think we have really good year, like in the season. Playoffs, we play good and I think first round we play really good against really good team. Second round, too. It’s always you want to be champion and win. Everyone know this. It was good series and it’s just feel this year, it’s like not something done, you know? Stuff like that. Think team played really good hockey this year…” said Kaprizov to the media in his end-of-season interview when asked about the past season and postseason. 

He earned an A- for his efforts during the regular season. For some, that may be high given his numbers weren’t as high as they could’ve been, but it’s not lower because of the overall efforts he put in. 89 points is still a respectable number, and he led the team with that number. It wasn’t higher because, as stated above, he’s proven he can do more and that had to be acknowledged.

Kaprizov’s Postseason Efforts

He led them in the regular season, and he led them in the postseason, but he had to share the top spot with teammate Quinn Hughes in the playoffs. He played in all 11 games and scored four goals, plus he registered 11 assists for 15 points, the exact same numbers as Hughes. He did what was expected of him in the postseason; they just needed more from everyone to move on, and they didn’t get that.