Russo and Smith: Will Wild be patient or try to re-sign Foligno, Zuccarello and

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Wild haven’t yet dropped the puck on the 2023-24 season, but it’s not too early to start thinking about next season and how the heck they’re going to navigate their long list of players about to play in the final year of their contracts.

You certainly know the Wild are thinking about it.

Next season will be the final season of at least the major portion of the buyout pain for Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. They’ll have to spend $14.7 million less than most other teams — perhaps more if they’re dinged with overages should Marco Rossi hit up to $850,000 in performance bonuses.

While it may seem like they have a lot of money to play with at more than $24 million in cap space — especially relative to this past offseason when they basically had pennies to spend — that seemingly hefty figure will evaporate quickly considering they only have six forwards, five defensemen and one goalie signed for 2024-25.

That’s six or seven forwards, two defensemen and one goalie short.

Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartman are the big pending unrestricted free agents with Brandon Duhaime, who signed a one-year deal this summer, a close second. In addition, Pat Maroon, Jujhar Khaira, Marc-Andre Fleury and Alex Goligoski are free to test the market, while Connor Dewar and Calen Addison are pending restricted free agents with arbitration rights.

The first three are obviously the pressing players and there are two avenues to go: be patient and see how this season plays out or begin contract talks and see if you can extend their contracts now, if the term and money are comfortable.

In one sense, it makes perfect sense to wait. What’s the rush? See how each player plays this season and, just as importantly, see how the team performs. If the Wild regress in what should be an improved Central Division, they could be in prime position to sell at the deadline and get valuable assets for players who should be wanted by any playoff team.

But in the other sense, if the players have good years, they’re not getting any cheaper, and these are players the Wild value heavily. The Wild want to be a competitive team next year and into the future.

While a few weeks ago it felt like the Wild planned to wait, in reading the tea leaves now, it feels like the Wild have had initial conversations with some of the Big Three.

And you know each would like to stay.

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Foligno. “It feels like home and I play a pretty good role here, too. I love it. I feel like I’ve been part of the changing of the culture and a big part of the room and growing up with a lot of the core guys. You just want to stick around, see it through. That’s my mentality is to hope to be here for the long term, not just a couple years. Hopefully, it’ll be longer than that. I want to see this team get a championship. That’s the biggest thing.”

Foligno: Entering the final year of a three-year, $9.3 million ($3.1M AAV) deal,…