You have to look under the hood a bit to notice, but Matt Boldy is coming off his worst NHL season. His 27 goals and 73 points masked a regression in his ability to drive offense and defense, going from elite in both categories to merely fine. At a time when he had half a season to assume the mantle of The Guy on the team with Kirill Kaprizov out, he didn’t quite deliver.
It’s likely to be the worst season we’ll see from Boldy in a long time, health permitting. Still, when you look at his hefty $7 million salary? Boldy was a clear bargain.
Make it as simple or complicated as you’d like. Boldy produced the 34th-most points among forwards on the 62nd-highest cap hit. We’re talking Tage Thompson/Sebastian Aho-type production for the price of Troy Terry. According to The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn, he produced $8.6 million in value on his $7 million cap hit.
Speaking of Luszczyszyn, he’s put Boldy’s bargain into the August news cycle with his list of the 10 best contracts in the NHL. Boldy’s deal snuck in at ninth place, with Luszczyszyn projecting it to net Minnesota $27 million in surplus value over the next five years. As the years on the deal wind down, it’ll likely fall out of the top 10, but the deal itself will only keep getting better for the Wild.
Boldy inked his contract during the post-COVID flat cap stagnation, accounting for 8.38% of the $83.5 million salary cap. We already know the salary cap is going to be for the next three years, and over that time, it’ll be up around 37.5%. Boldy’s contract will be a minuscule slice of Minnesota’s overall pie very, very soon.
Here’s the percentage of cap space Boldy’s taking up, as well as the 2023-24 cap equivalent, over the first five years of his contract:
2023-24: 8.38% ($7.00M)
2024-25: 7.95% ($6.64M)
2025-26: 7.33% ($6.12M)
2026-27: 6.73% ($5.62M)
2027-28: 6.17% ($5.15M)
In just three years, Boldy’s salary is going to be about the same cap percentage as, for instance, Morgan Geekie ($5.5M, 5.8% of a $95.5M cap). That’s what? A decent second/third-line tweener on a good team? Boldy’s a bona-fide top-line forward, with the potential to ascend into the conversation with the league’s best wingers if he takes another step.
The value Boldy brings with his contract has already helped the Wild make the playoffs despite some major salary cap hell. Next season, Minnesota will get the peak bang for its buck between his and Kaprizov’s salaries.
These are the top-10 teams for points-per-game from their top-two scorers over the past two seasons, along with their combined cap percentage in 2025-26:
- Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl, EDM: 3.05 (28.7%)
- Nikita Kucherov/Brayden Point, TBL: 2.76 (19.9%)
- Nathan MacKinnon/Martin Necas, COL: 2.47 (20.0%)
- Artemiy Panarin/J.T. Miller, NYR: 2.41 (20.6%)
- Mitch Marner/Jack Eichel, VGK: 2.41 (23.0%)
- Auston Matthews/William Nylander, TOR: 2.36 (25.9%)
- KIRILL KAPRIZOV/MATT BOLDY, MIN: 2.21 (16.8%)
- Jack Hughes/Jesper Bratt, NJD: 2.21 (16.6%)
- Mikko Rantanen/Jason Robertson, DAL: 2.17 (20.7%)
- Sam Reinhart/Sasha Barkov, FLA: 2.16 (19.5%)
That’s just ridiculous value for next season, carried in large part by Kaprizov’s $9 million salary in the final year of his deal. Going forward, though, Boldy’s going to carry a lot more of the weight. Boldy’s deal will allow the Wild to pay Kaprizov top dollar without suffering with the salary cap.
The upper limit to estimates on Kaprizov’s next cap hit is $15 million, which would (currently) make him the league’s highest-paid player going into 2026-27. That’s a lot of money, and a big chunk of the cap. But with Boldy’s salary, that’s only $22 million between the two.
We don’t know the salary cap beyond the next two seasons, but here’s what percentage of the cap $22 million would take up in…
2026-27: 21.2%
2027-28: 19.3%
The Wild are going to be paying their top two forwards not much more than a fifth of their salary cap, at worst, for the next three years. Beyond that, the number goes down from there. Boldy will have two more years locked in at $7 million per season, and that’s going to be excellent news for Minnesota.
This crop of young talent that Wild fans have been waiting for is basically all here, starting in September. Within two years, all of these players will need to get paid. Marco Rossi is already looking for his next deal. Jesper Wallstedt and David Jiříček will look for a raise next year, and Zeev Buium, Liam Öhgren, and Danila Yurov are up to get paid two summers from now.
If those players are anywhere near what we think they’ll be, it’d be tough to keep this core together, especially if the Wild are going to make some sort of splashy move to add a star player. Paying Boldy $7 million instead of $10 or $12 over the next five years could mean the difference between keeping or losing a key piece of Minnesota’s puzzle. They still have to be smart in their moves and investments, but being smart with Boldy gives them a hell of a head start.