ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Kirill Kaprizov brought a refreshed body and mind to the rink for the first day of training camp with the Minnesota Wild, and his easy, boyish smile was not far behind.
All that was missing was a new contract.
After an intense practice and an intrasquad scrimmage at the team's training facility on Thursday, Kaprizov met with reporters for the first time since the Wild were eliminated from the playoffs more than four months ago and tried to assure everyone in the room and around Minnesota he's not looking to leave. He called the Twin Cities area his “second home,” behind his native Russia.
“I like Minny, and everyone knows this. We have a lot of time. It’s just 2025, and it’s one more year I have,” Kaprizov said. "I just want to play hockey and focus and win some games and go in playoffs and win there.”
Though the Wild have long expressed confidence in the completion of a deal, that didn't happen during the summer. General manager Bill Guerin didn't appear to be concerned, though, about the long-term presence of his 28-year-old left wing who's been on a superstar track since his debut in the pandemic-altered 2020-21 season.
“These negotiations are private. I can’t really get into it. Things are fine,” Guerin said. “The most important thing is that we want to sign Kirill. He’s our franchise player. We want to keep him here. He’s a big part of our team. We’re working towards that. We’re doing the best we can. Hopefully we’ll get there sooner than later. But today’s more about the team and getting off on the right foot.”
Unfortunately for Guerin and the Wild, a social media post last week by longtime NHL reporter Frank Seravalli made the process decidedly more public, citing unnamed sources with news that Kaprizov's camp had rejected an offer believed to be for $128 million over eight years that would be the most in league history for total compensation and average annual value.
Kaprizov could be seeking a shorter deal with a higher average annual value to give him a chance to cash in again. Kaprizov's agent, Paul Theofanous, was at practice on Thursday, speaking at length with assistant general manager Mat Sells. Neither Guerin nor Kaprizov would go anywhere near the generalities of the negotiations, let alone specifics, during their separate media sessions.
“Not everything written on social media is true. Not everything’s false,” Guerin said. “But I can’t help what other people do, and it’s not important. What’s important is our relationship with our players, from Kirill on down. And we can’t let things like that get in the way of our relationship, of our negotiations or business dealings.”
Kaprizov isn't the only high-profile NHL player who arrived at camp this week on an expiring contract. Five-time scoring champion Connor McDavid has not signed a new deal with Edmonton. Neither has Jack Eichel with Vegas. All three of them would be free agents next summer if no extension is reached before then. But that's a long way from now.
“Why wouldn’t we be confident? It’s been a great relationship,” Guerin said. “We love the kid.”
Kaprizov spent most of the summer in Russia with family and friends, sticking mostly with the same offseason training routine. After missing 40 games during the 2024-25 season because of an unspecified lower-body injury that eventually required surgery, Kaprizov said he's been “a little bit more focused” on his conditioning in light of the frustratingly long absence.
If he can wait that long to return to the ice, well, he can surely be patient with the status of his contract.
“ Just focus on hockey and the camp right now. I just want to be practicing,” Kaprizov said. "We have a lot of time. Just want to practice and get ready for the season and focus on this right now.”
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FILE - Minnesota Wild left wing Kirill Kaprizov (97) talks with referee Eric Furlatt (27) during Game 5 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knights April 29, 2025, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/David Becker File)
FILE - Minnesota Wild left wing Kirill Kaprizov (97) fights for the puck against Vegas Golden Knights center Jack Eichel (9) during the third period in Game 4 of an NHL hockey Stanley Cup first-round playoff series April 26, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. Vegas won 4-3 in overtime. (AP Photo/Stacy Bengs, File)
Minnesota Wild star left wing Kirill Kaprizov speaks to reporters after practice on the first day of NHL hockey training camp in St. Paul, Minn., Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Dave Campbell)
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump would not be the first president to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened, so that he can send U.S. military forces to Minnesota.
But he'd be the only commander in chief to use the 19th-century law to send troops to quell protests that started because of federal officers the president already has sent to the area — one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen.
The law, which allows presidents to use the military domestically, has been invoked on more than two dozen occasions — but rarely since the 20th Century's Civil Rights Movement.
Federal forces typically are called to quell widespread violence that has broken out on the local level — before Washington's involvement and when local authorities ask for help. When presidents acted without local requests, it was usually to enforce the rights of individuals who were being threatened or not protected by state and local governments. A third scenario is an outright insurrection — like the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Experts in constitutional and military law say none of that clearly applies in Minneapolis.
“This would be a flagrant abuse of the Insurrection Act in a way that we've never seen,” said Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program. “None of the criteria have been met.”
William Banks, a Syracuse University professor emeritus who has written extensively on the domestic use of the military, said the situation is “a historical outlier” because the violence Trump wants to end “is being created by the federal civilian officers” he sent there.
But he also cautioned Minnesota officials would have “a tough argument to win” in court, because the judiciary is hesitant to challenge “because the courts are typically going to defer to the president” on his military decisions.
Here is a look at the law, how it's been used and comparisons to Minneapolis.
George Washington signed the first version in 1792, authorizing him to mobilize state militias — National Guard forerunners — when “laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed.”
He and John Adams used it to quash citizen uprisings against taxes, including liquor levies and property taxes that were deemed essential to the young republic's survival.
Congress expanded the law in 1807, restating presidential authority to counter “insurrection or obstruction” of laws. Nunn said the early statutes recognized a fundamental “Anglo-American tradition against military intervention in civilian affairs” except “as a tool of last resort.”
The president argues Minnesota officials and citizens are impeding U.S. law by protesting his agenda and the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Customs and Border Protection officers. Yet early statutes also defined circumstances for the law as unrest “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course” of law enforcement.
There are between 2,000 and 3,000 federal authorities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, compared to Minneapolis, which has fewer than 600 police officers. Protesters' and bystanders' video, meanwhile, has shown violence initiated by federal officers, with the interactions growing more frequent since Renee Good was shot three times and killed.
“ICE has the legal authority to enforce federal immigration laws,” Nunn said. “But what they're doing is a sort of lawless, violent behavior” that goes beyond their legal function and “foments the situation” Trump wants to suppress.
“They can't intentionally create a crisis, then turn around to do a crackdown,” he said, adding that the Constitutional requirement for a president to “faithfully execute the laws” means Trump must wield his power, on immigration and the Insurrection Act, “in good faith.”
Courts have blocked some of Trump's efforts to deploy the National Guard, but he'd argue with the Insurrection Act that he does not need a state's permission to send troops.
That traces to President Abraham Lincoln, who held in 1861 that Southern states could not legitimately secede. So, he convinced Congress to give him express power to deploy U.S. troops, without asking, into Confederate states he contended were still in the Union. Quite literally, Lincoln used the act as a legal basis to fight the Civil War.
Nunn said situations beyond such a clear insurrection as the Confederacy still require a local request or another trigger that Congress added after the Civil War: protecting individual rights. Ulysses S. Grant used that provision to send troops to counter the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists who ignored the 14th and 15th amendments and civil rights statutes.
During post-war industrialization, violence erupted around strikes and expanding immigration — and governors sought help.
President Rutherford B. Hayes granted state requests during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 after striking workers, state forces and local police clashed, leading to dozens of deaths. Grover Cleveland granted a Washington state governor's request — at that time it was a U.S. territory — to help protect Chinese citizens who were being attacked by white rioters. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to Colorado in 1914 amid a coal strike after workers were killed.
Federal troops helped diffuse each situation.
Banks stressed that the law then and now presumes that federal resources are needed only when state and local authorities are overwhelmed — and Minnesota leaders say their cities would be stable and safe if Trump's feds left.
As Grant had done, mid-20th century presidents used the act to counter white supremacists.
Franklin Roosevelt dispatched 6,000 troops to Detroit — more than double the U.S. forces in Minneapolis — after race riots that started with whites attacking Black residents. State officials asked for FDR's aid after riots escalated, in part, Nunn said, because white local law enforcement joined in violence against Black residents. Federal troops calmed the city after dozens of deaths, including 17 Black residents killed by local police.
Once the Civil Rights Movement began, presidents sent authorities to Southern states without requests or permission, because local authorities defied U.S. civil rights law and fomented violence themselves.
Dwight Eisenhower enforced integration at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; John F. Kennedy sent troops to the University of Mississippi after riots over James Meredith's admission and then pre-emptively to ensure no violence upon George Wallace's “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” to protest the University of Alabama's integration.
“There could have been significant loss of life from the rioters” in Mississippi, Nunn said.
Lyndon Johnson protected the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery after Wallace's troopers attacked marchers' on their first peaceful attempt.
Johnson also sent troops to multiple U.S. cities in 1967 and 1968 after clashes between residents and police escalated. The same thing happened in Los Angeles in 1992, the last time the Insurrection Act was invoked.
Riots erupted after a jury failed to convict four white police officers of excessive use of force despite video showing them beating a Rodney King, a Black man. California Gov. Pete Wilson asked President George H.W. Bush for support.
Bush authorized about 4,000 troops — but after he had publicly expressed displeasure over the trial verdict. He promised to “restore order” yet directed the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation, and two of the L.A. officers were later convicted in federal court.
President Donald Trump answers questions after signing a bill that returns whole milk to school cafeterias across the country, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
