Wild's Niederreiter ready for more after signing 5-year contract
Nino Niederreiter is ready for more.
More goals, more ice time and more money.
He got the latter on Sunday, when Niederreiter signed a five-year, $26.25 million contract with the Minnesota Wild just a few days ahead of a salary arbitration hearing.
Armed with the most lucrative contract of his young career, Niederreiter says he's ready to take another step forward a year after scoring a career-high 25 goals.
“I definitely haven’t had my best season yet,” Niederreiter told reporters during a conference call Monday. “Even last year I don’t think everything went perfectly smoothly."
The 24-year-old has made progress in each of his four seasons with the Wild, upping his production every year while scoring at least 20 goals in each of the last three seasons.
Still, after suffering through a 16-game scoring drought late in the season, Niederreiter says he still has room to grow.
"There’s always been stretches during the season where I don’t find the score sheet, and that’s definitely something which I want to improve," he said. "My big goal is to get 30 in this league.”
With an uptick in ice time he's a likely candidate to get there.
Niederreiter ranked third on the Wild in goals last year while averaging just 15:04 minutes of ice time per game, good enough for eighth on the team.
However, he isn't interested in forcing the issue.
"I feel like I was ready last year. At the end of the day as a player you feel like you're always ready to play more and get more ice time," he said. "But at the end of the day that’s the coach’s job and I can only control what I can control."
With Niederreiter under contract the Wild have just two players left unsigned: forwards Mikael Granlund and Marcus Foligno.
Granlund has an arbitration hearing scheduled for Friday and is expected to command a significant chunk of Minnesota's estimated $10.5 million in available cap space after leading the Wild with 69 points last season.
Foligno, who was acquired in an offseason trade with the Buffalo Sabres, is coming off a one-year, $2.25 contract.
