Minnesota Wild Confirm Plan to Buy Out Ryan Suter, Zach Parise

As per a report by Michael Russo of The Athletic, according to sources, the Minnesota Wild have decided to buy out the contracts of two veteran players making a lot of money on the team’s salary cap. General manager Bill Guerin called both Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to inform each of them that the team is buying out the final four years of their respective deals.

When news surfaced this week that neither player was asked to waive their no-move clauses for the purpose of the NHL Expansion Draft, that was the first sign the Wild might be considering a buy out. There was a deadline to ask players to make themselves available and if they didn’t, the only recourse was to buy out their contracts if the intention was to get those contracts off the books.

Related: Predators Goaltender Pekka Rinne Retires

NEWS: #mnwild General Manager Bill Guerin today announced the club will buy out the final four years of the contracts of forward Zach Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter.

More information » https://t.co/hd3D1naoA0 pic.twitter.com/04tHQ6T88p

— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) July 13, 2021

As a result of these buy outs, both players will become free agents on July 28. Russo tweeted after he wrote his article, “Because both have no-moves, they essentially will get emails from team to waive waivers and become free agents.”

As per Russo’s report, “The Wild will pay each $6.7 million over the next eight years and be charged with $2.371 million, $6.371 million and $7.371 million cap hits in the next four years, respectively, for each, then $833,333 cap hits the four years after that for each.”

As Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff writes, “This is a whopper.” It clears off $10 million in cap space for the upcoming season, but it just delays what could be a massive salary cap issue for the team in the future. It two seasons, that $13 million might be looked as a huge mistake. In three and four seasons from now, it’s nearly $15 million.

This news comes one day after a trade where the Oilers gave up two assets and retained all of Duncan Keith’s salary cap. They’re paying a hefty price for a declining asset while Suter will be available at a year younger and is a former first-team NHL All-Star who played 22 minutes per game for Minnesota last season. It would cost the Oilers nothing to add him. There’s also talk that Nick Leddy will be available for cheap out of the New York Islanders organization. The point? Rather quickly, decent options are becoming available as the NHL Expansion Draft approaches.

It will be interesting to see where each of these players want to go. Parise has been linked to the New York Islanders in the past.

Next: Holland Argues He Couldn’t “Squeeze” Blackhawks in Keith Trade