The Minnesota Wild team that Kirill Kaprizov is set to join at the start of the 2020-21 season is vastly differently from the one that drafted him five years ago.

While Kaprizov climbed the rungs of the Russian hockey ladder and peaked as an elite KHL forward, the Wild went in the exact opposite direction, going from an ever-dangerous, well-balanced playoff threat to a retooling organization. The team’s core has fractured, releasing a close-to-retirement Mikko Koivu, and trading away Eric Staal, Jason Zucker, and Mikaël Granlund in an attempt to start anew.

This sort of upheaval has its downsides for Kaprizov. His supporting cast left before he even got there, and a Stanley Cup seems so far from the Wild’s grasps for the next few seasons at the very least. The other way to look at it is as