Report: Wild Buying Out Parise And Suter Contracts
The Minnesota Wild are set to move on without Zach Parise and Ryan Suter according to a report published Tuesday morning by The Athletic's Michael Russo. The duo each have four years remaining on the matching 13-year deals they signed on Independence Day in 2012.
The tandem turned around a Wild team that had missed the playoffs for four straight seasons and made them a perennial playoff team. Minnesota made the postseason in nine out of the ten seasons with Parise and Suter on the team.
However, the team never really went far in the playoffs with Suter and Parise as the faces of the franchise with just two appearances in the second round and none since 2014-15.
Parise tallied exactly 400 points in 558 games with the Wild including 199 goals. He tallied 36 points in 44 playoff games.
Tensions were high between Parise and the organization this past season as the team decided to make the veteran a healthy scratch for a number of games including the first three games of their playoff series with the Vegas Golden Knights.
Suter played in 656 games with Minnesota and put up 369 points while registering a +62 rating. He made one All Star team in his first season with the Wild.
According to Russo, the Wild will pay each player $6.7 million over the next eight years while absorbing cap hits of various sizes throughout the next eight years.
The timing of the move, coming one week before the expansion draft in which the Wild would have been obligated to protect both players due to their no-movement clauses, is likely not a coincidence.