The Wild have bought out Parise and Suter.
They will be paying them $833,333 each for the next 8 years, and their hit against the salary cap will be as follows.
2021-22: $2.37M
2022-23: $6.37M
2023-24: $7.37M
2024-25: $7.37M
2025-26: $0.833M
2026-27: $0.833M
2027-28: $0.833M
2028-29: $0.833M
If they hadn't been bought out it would have been $7.54M for the next four years.
Bill Guerin apparently didn't buy into the short season's success against weak competition in California and is building for 4-5 years down the line?
I don't know how else to interpret this one.
What does this mean for the defense?
The immediate consequence is that Matt Dumba is not going anywhere this offseason. The Wild can protect Brodin, Spurgeon, and Dumba in the expansion draft next week and only expose Carson Soucy from their defense corps.
Calen Addison had a great year in the AHL this year and it looks like he's going to get quite a few minutes next year with the Wild. Brendan Mennell has been in contract talks after a solid year in Russia and he wants an NHL deal as well, so we may see him as a 6th/7th defenseman on a league-minimum contract. (or not - who knows?)
Minnesota will have to sign a couple of D-men to fill out their blueline this summer, but I'm guessing those signings will be pretty small deals.
What does this mean for expansion?
Dumba is protected (as stated above). Parise off the books means that now the Wild can protect Nico Sturm.
Exposed list -- Rask, Bjugstad, Soucy, Kahkonen - minor leaguers (Mennell is maybe the most relevant one here)
Or, I guess you could just look at this Russo tweet (except he forgot about the Bjugstad contract)
Losing any of those four exposed players is not that big of a deal. Guerin would like to keep Soucy now that the D is short-staffed I'm sure.
Does this help in having $$$ to sign Dollar Bill Krill?
I don't really think so. I don't think the problem is payroll but instead salary cap.
The Wild are saving more than $12M in payroll over the next four years with this buyout.
But the cap savings are big this year ($5.2M) and miniscule the three years after that. So signing a big long contract for Kaprizov makes roster construction even tougher in 2022-2025.
From every report, Kaprizov wants a three year deal (so he can up his value and make huge $$ as a free agent in 2024, his first eligible year), and the Wild have offered eight year deals (to lock him up through his prime). So, money doesn't seem to be the sticking point?
We'll see. Guerin has a lot more info than I do.
Also, if salary cap goes up in the next couple of years, the impact is minimized. Hopefully with the new ESPN contract those sweet TV rights dollars start flowing.
The Wild can still sign Kaprizov, I think.
This just doesn't really help free up additional money to do that.
From the thread in the Cup: "then are paying full price for not having Parise/Suter on their team for next two years after that"...
So 3 years down the line, when we don't want Parise and Suter anyway because they're 3 years older and slower than they are now... seems like "full price" would be paying them the money and having them hurt you. Their contracts were sunk costs anyway, right?
One question I have: Is there a reason to do the buyout now, than, say, next year? The expansion draft? Are there limits on when they can do the buyout?
This year was the last year that Parise and Suter had significant salary ($6M this year, $2M next year, and $1M the two years after that).
Buyout next year would save the Wild very little money (The buyout would be two thirds of the $4M remaining on the contract and so the Wild would only save ~1.7M each over three years) And wouldn't affect the salary cap (the cap hit would be the 7.54M minus the buyout savings of less than one million per year).
IF the plan was to buy them out, then this was the year to do it.
you talking yourself into this being a reasonable move?
There's a big "if" at the beginning of that last sentence.
fixed it for you
Now it's even bigger!
seems like "full price" would be paying them the money and having them hurt you. Their contracts were sunk costs anyway, right?
Agree with this.
The only other solution was to put them on Long Term Injured Reserve so their salaries don't count against the cap.
so...Jeff Gillooly method?
I gotta think expansion draft flexibility also played a role in the timing. Probably not as much as financial opportunity.
Expansion draft is why it happened today as opposed to later in the offseason. Guerin has to submit his protected list by Saturday.
Is this a reasonable move?
In a vacuum, I think Zach Parise and Ryan Suter were still capable of being reasonably competent NHL players for another season or two. If you just go by numbers and value added, the Wild probably could have rode out the contracts and had a couple rough years at the end, but paved over it with some injured reserve shenanigans or reduced ice time. The other thing is that they aren't a package deal. Suter showed some signs of decline, but was a much more valuable player than Parise last year.
ALSO: Parise and Evason did not get along - that was abundantly clear last year, and was affecting Parise's ability to contribute (no PP time, fourth line minutes, etc.)
ALSO (Part 2):Guerin/Evason wanted new leaders on the team - When Koivu retired, the C went to Spurgeon - Guerin brought in locker room vets (Bonino, Cole) that he knew personally instead of allowing Suter/Parise (the de facto leaders in pre-Guerin years) to be in charge of the room.
I think those factors played a larger role in this decision than purely hockey ability. And that also makes it really hard to evaluate this and say "good move" or not. If Evason wasn't going to deploy these two in ways that increased their value, then ... now was the time to part ways. If Guerin thinks that Parise and Suter were washed up and had no value ... then I think this is bad evaluation of talent and a bad move.
It's hard to come down too hard on Guerin though, he inherited the worst 5 years of two 13-year mega-contracts. No easy answers here.
I think the buyout of Parise is defensible, but driven by factors off the ice more than on the ice. I think the buyout of Suter is a mistake and even though it allows the Wild to keep Dumba (a real positive), it's going to be hard to convince me that this is worth it.
From my reading and listening to Sports talk radio, BG bought out both contracts for the following reasons:
1. Financial flexibility this coming season. Corollary: Big cap hit if S and P on team or not, might as well bite the bullet now.
2. Little to no financial advantage if team buys them out in later years
3. Flexibility with expansion draft. Can protect Dumba to either sign long term or trade
4. Continue to change personality of team and locker room
5. Sutter packaged with outgoing anyway Parise because fear that Sutter would have acted like a dick if he remained on team.
4 and 5 might have actually been the most important reasons.
From Russo's story about the buyouts:
Reading the entire thing and it seems #4 is the reason. Either could have been asked to waive their no-move clause so they didn't have to be protected in the draft and both report they were not asked. I bet Parise would have done that.
I think one additional point that's not on this list is maybe the biggest.
6. Avoiding a huge (like, $25M huge) cap penalty in the case of retirement before the contracts expire. To quote Dmitri Filipovic - "that's an existential level threat ... you cannot field a team"
It will be interesting to see how point 1 works since big money deals will have to be short-term before the tough years of the buyout cap hits.
2,3, and 4 are all definitely true, but point 5 feels like Sports Talk Reckless Speculation
What does it say that none of the 6 reasons now listed are - "The play on the ice wasn't worth the $$"?
EvolvingHockey has Suter worth 6.8M last year and 15.9M over the last two years compared to his 7.5M cap hit each year. Dude was 36 years old and still earning almost exactly his cap number while playing more minutes than all but 7 NHL defensemen.
I guess you don't bet against Father Time, but if anyone earned those last years of their mega-deal, it was Ryan Suter.
That's why my 4 and 5 come into play. I don't think anyone can argue that Sutter hasn't earned his contract and no signs of slowing down and will no doubt sign for a nice contract on a contending team. #5 might be reckless speculation but even Russo was throwing that out there and he's not one to speculate (much).
I agree completely about the retirement clause penalty. That would have devastated the cap and BG took that issue completely off the table.
Well then BG goes on Zulgad and says that Suter's playing time was about to be cut, so I guess Father Time wins again.
Just idly noting that late first round picks tend to debut in the NHL about 3 years later, right about the time that the Wild are going to need some cheap players to manage their cap with the Parise/Suter buyouts....
credit to Owen Kewell for the graph.
Note that Arizona has forfeited their first round pick (#11), so in reality all of these numbers will be one spot higher in the draft order.
5 picks in the top 90 is exciting, but also there's still 9 days until the draft so who knows what roster changes will happen before then.