Wild buy out Parise, Suter

MINNEAPOLIS — Nine years after Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed twin contracts together worth nearly $200 million with the Minnesota Wild, they are being bought out together in a stunning turn of events early in the NHL offseason.

General manager Bill Guerin made the announcement Tuesday that the team is buying out the final four years of each player’s contract, which were originally structured to last 13 years. It is a sudden end for a tenure that began with such promise when the two American stars signed identical $98-million US contracts on July 4, 2012.

Perhaps it was only fitting they were a package deal on the way out like they were on the way in. Parise and Suter will enter free agency at the same time July 28.

“It seemed like the right thing to do,” Guerin told reporters. “I felt this was the cleanest way. This way gives them more of an opportunity to go out and do what they can do.”

Parise and Suter were signed through 2025 at matching salary cap hits of $7.538 million US each year. The buyouts save over $10 million next season but extend dead money on the cap through 2029. They will combine to cost the Wild almost $15 million against the salary cap in 2023-24 and 2024-25 for Parise and Suter not to play for them.

“Those years will be tough, but we’re going to have to do a very good job of drafting players and a very good job of developing players and injecting some younger, cheaper players into our lineup,” said Guerin, who took over in 2019 when longtime GM Chuck Fletcher was fired.

Owner Craig Leipold, who spearheaded the master plan to add two upper Midwest products in the same free agent year in 2012, called Parise and Suter, “tremendous ambassadors for our team” who helped win a lot of games. Minnesota made the playoffs eight times in nine seasons since signing Parise and Suter but never got past the second round. That includes a first-round exit this season.

That defeat, plus the Seattle expansion draft next week and emergence of younger players paved the way for the buyouts. Minnesota can now protect defenceman Matt Dumba and one other player from the Kraken instead of trading them.