{"id":153036,"date":"2025-09-18T16:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/153036\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T16:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:53:09","slug":"mats-zuccarello-could-miss-start-of-2025-26-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/153036\/","title":{"rendered":"Mats Zuccarello could miss start of 2025-26 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">The <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/minnesota-wild\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Minnesota Wild<\/a> may be without one of their top offensive threats when the 2025-2026 season rolls around, as general manager Bill Guerin told reporters on Thursday that Mats Zuccarello had \u201csomething come up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">\u201cWe\u2019re still kind of looking at it but it could be something where he\u2019s out for the start of the season,\u201d Guerin told the media, according to a Tweet from <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/jessi_pierce\/status\/1968709707075371042\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">NHL.com reporter Jessi Pierce<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Zuccarello did not participate in the first day of Wild training camp on Thursday, and based on Guerin\u2019s assessment that he could miss the start of the season, it seems unlikely that he will return in a non-contact capacity in the immediate future.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">The veteran forward from Norway is set to enter his seventh season in Minnesota after spending the first nine years of his career with the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/new-york-rangers\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Rangers<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Zuccarello has remained very productive offensively into his late 30s, as he\u2019s coming off a campaign that saw him put up 54 points in 69 regular season games. In the 2021-2022 season, Zuccarello scored a career-high 79 points. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">The 38-year-old is not the only offensively-gifted winger in the organization making headlines, as Guerin also provided his perspective on the current state of negotiations between the club and superstar winger Kirill Kaprizov after reports surfaced that Kaprizov <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/news\/minnesota-wild-kirill-kaprizov-turned-down-contract-highest-paid-nhl-16-128-million\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">turned down an eight-year offer<\/a> that would have come with an average annual value of $16 million and made him the highest-paid player in NHL history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">\u201cThese negotiations are private,\u201d Guerin told reporters, <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RussoHockey\/status\/1968710145933779350\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">including The Athletic\u2018s Michael Russo<\/a>. \u201cI can\u2019t really get into it. Things are fine. The most important thing is that we want to sign Kirill. He\u2019s our franchise player. We want to keep him here. He\u2019s a big part of our team. We\u2019re working towards that. We\u2019re doing the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Wild may be without one of their top offensive threats when the 2025-2026 season rolls around,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-153036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}