Exactly one year ago, Jared Spurgeon signed a four-year contract extension. A year before that, Marco Scandella signed for five more years.
Don't expect similar middle-of-the-season contract extensions for the Wild's two biggest potential restricted free agents, Nino Niederreiter and Mikael Granlund, this season.
General Manager Chuck Fletcher said Tuesday his strategy as of this moment is to save that portion of his to-do list for the summertime.
"The only focus right now is having the best season we can have," Fletcher said. "We'll deal with those contracts in the summer. We have expansion we have to deal with, so there's still a lot of things we have to contend with after the season.
"I've purposely just tried to keep all those discussions to the end of the year."
Fletcher said from a salary-cap standpoint, if the Wild wants to keep both players, it'll find a way to afford both.
"We've always found a way to keep the players we wanted to keep," Fletcher said.
Niederreiter and Granlund have arbitration rights in July, so Fletcher believes that will spur a quick resolution for one- or two-year arbitration awards or long-term contracts. Asked what makes Niederreiter's and Granlund's situations different from extending Scandella and Spurgeon in-season, Fletcher said, "Sometimes those contracts go well and they happen quickly and sometimes they don't happen quickly, and when they don't happen quickly, I just think it becomes a distraction. We'll have plenty of time."
