Joined: Jul. 2020
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Fun fact: Guerin did not screw our cap with the buyouts. Chuck Fletcher did when he signed those deals. I'm gonna quote Michael Russo:
"... the one thing I do want to make clear out of fairness is it’s really not the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts creating a lack of flexibility.
It’s the contracts themselves.
We all knew when the Wild signed both players to twin 13-year, $98 million contracts in 2012 that it wouldn’t end well. They never do.
But when the NHL decided to retroactively implement cap recapture penalties, we especially knew it could be painful if they became declining players late in their careers and decided to prematurely retire for non-injury reasons during the back dive of their deals. They were to each make $6 million next season, then $4 million total in their final three seasons.
But if Parise and Suter were still on the books for the next four years at $7.538 million each, the Wild would have even less flexibility and Wednesday’s first day of free agency would have really been slow because the Wild wouldn’t have been able to get in on pretty much any player. That’s why the last month before Parise was bought out I kept alluding to the fact that I really started to sense something was up and that the team may have to buy him out because something had to give.
The math just didn’t work if the Wild planned to re-sign Kaprizov and Kevin Fiala AND fill out the rest of the roster.
The Suter buyout to go along with Parise, well, that obviously surprised everyone.
But no matter what happened, these contracts would have caused long-term pain. They were just debilitating in large part because of the cap recapture. The buyouts actually relieved some of that pain."