Neal: There’s no reason to doubt Bill Guerin’s ability to build Wild into a Stanley Cup contender

Here’s the weekly 3-2 Pitch: Three observations and two predictions regarding the local sports scene.

The long-awaited Kirill Kaprizov contract extension has been signed.

Filip Gustavsson has been locked up. There’s no more drama with Marco Rossi’s deal.

And the Wild begin the season with salary cap space unlocked for the first time in several years.

There is stability. There is a core of young talent. There is money. There is hope.

And there are higher expectations for Bill Guerin, the team’s president of hockey operations, to build a team capable of making a run toward a Stanley Cup.

Guerin tied his own hands behind his back four years ago when he bought out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. Each of the past two years brought $14.7 million of cap-hit pain. There’s still a $1.6 million hit for four more seasons, but the worst of the 2021 buyout is over.

Guerin enters the regular season with $3.5 million under the salary cap, according to the website Spotrac. He has draft picks and young talent as capital. He now has flexibility to take on salary once he finds a deal that moves this program forward. Notice I used the word “once” and not “if.”

The State of Hockey has waited through the dead cap era for years and has continued to show up to Xcel Energy Center/Grand Casino Arena. On the short term, fans deserve a team that can get out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2015. The longer term involves a Cup run. The window to become a serious contender has opened.

While signing the richest contract extension in NHL history, Kaprizov wanted assurances that the Wild would push for a championship. So Guerin, with help from owner Craig Leipold, must keep that promise. Connor McDavid has never won a Stanley Cup, and there’s pressure in Edmonton to make that happen, so much that he took a bargain contract. There’s pressure here as well, with Kaprizov reaching his peak years.

You can’t have enough scoring. Guerin can start there. If he wants to add an established center, he can revisit that before the trade deadline. With Nico Sturm, who was signed to boost the penalty kill, out indefinitely because of a back injury, Guerin might have to address that need sooner rather than later. With the salary cap increasing by at least $8.5 million in each of the next three offseasons, Guerin will be able to cast into the deeper end of the free-agent pool.

Guerin has all the tools to build a winner now. He must do right by his high-scoring forward as well as serving a long-suffering fanbase.

Speaking of wasting a great player’s career ... Aaron Judge, 33, is without a World Series ring.

The Yankees were eliminated from the postseason on Wednesday by Toronto and have not won a championship in 16 years. The Yankee Mystique is a myth, right?

Not when the Twins get involved.

Going back to 2003, the year after the Twins returned to the postseason for the first time since 1991, the Yankees are 16-2 against them in the playoffs and have won the past 13 October meetings. Even the 2019 Bomba Squad Twins were swept in three games by New York.

Against every other playoff opponent going back to 2003, the Yankees are 56-71. While the Yankees have bludgeoned the Twins, they are mere mortals against the rest of baseball.

Don’t rule out J.J. McCarthy starting for the Vikings next Sunday against the Eagles at U.S. Bank Stadium, based on a couple of things I heard during Kevin O’Connell’s last news conference on Monday.

McCarthy spent the bye week working out at the team practice facility, but O’Connell described it as “extensive work.” Could that put him in a position to contribute sooner rather than later?

“We’ll be able to get him some extensive work, kind of as a lead into next week,” KOC said. “Then I anticipate his workload building up. We’re going to really take advantage of that bonus Monday, not only with him, but with the rest of the team.”

Just before that, O’Connell noted that backup Carson Wentz was “pretty sore” in the left shoulder he injured last weekend vs. the Browns. The Vikings have been closed to the media since Monday. But we have one quarterback ramping up while the other is banged up. Looking forward to juicy updates this week.

• The Twins this week will begin looking harder into managerial candidates to replace Rocco Baldelli as more teams are eliminated from the postseason.