Kirill Kaprizov will miss at least four weeks as he will have surgery on a lower-body injury, Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin said Tuesday.

Guerin said that while the Wild's star winger be out of the lineup, it is not a season-ending injury. He said Kaprizov will be week-to-week.

A three-time 40-goal scorer, Kaprizov was having what appeared to be the strongest season of his career. He entered late December as a Hart Trophy candidate for the league's most valuable player. He was tied for second in the NHL in goals while tied for fourth in scoring, just seven points behind Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon for the league lead.

Kaprizov then sustained a lower-body injury that kept him out of the Wild's lineup for a month. He returned Jan. 23, logging zero points in 16:39 of ice time in a 4-0 loss to the Utah Hockey Club. Kaprizov would play two more games, registering an assist in both contests while averaging more than 21 minutes in each game before Guerin's announcement.

"I think he's handled it the best that he could," coach John Hynes said. "To his credit, he does everything that the doctors ask. He's a workhorse. He does anything he can do to get himself ready to play even though he's not feeling great, he's certainly done that."

The provided timeline suggests the earliest Kaprizov could return to the Wild would be late February or early March. One detail that could minimize Kaprizov's absence would be the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament that runs Feb. 12-20. The Wild have six games before the four-team international tournament featuring Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States.

Minnesota's first game back from the 4 Nations Face-Off would be Feb. 22.

"We just need to deal with the situation," Guerin said. "It's not the end of the world. We're going to keep playing and continue to get better. When Kirill's healthy and all healed up, he'll be back, and we'll be even better."

Regardless of how many games Kaprizov misses, his absence is expected to play a significant role in the Wild's bid to reach the playoffs after missing the postseason in 2023-24. Previously, the Wild had made the playoffs in four straight seasons while only missing the postseason once since the start of the 2012-13 campaign.

Minnesota (29-17-4) opened the season with a 20-6-4 start only to go 9-11 since Dec. 14. Since then, they've had two separate three-game losing streaks but remain in the hunt for a playoff spot.

The Wild entered Tuesday third in a rather tight Central Division race in which they are a point behind the second-place Dallas Stars and two points ahead of the Avalanche, who hold the first of two wild-card positions.