Is Zach Parise a Hypocrite?

Despite three days of meetings last weekend and then another brief, two hour discussion on Tuesday, there hasn’t been a lot of progress to date in terms of a new CBA.  As every day passes the fans get more impatient and so are the players.  Many are flocking overseas to play in premier leagues in Russia, Switzerland and Sweden while others remain on North American soil hoping for any type of positive news from their Players Association.  Zach Parise, one of the newest members of the Minnesota Wild is one of those frustrated players and now he’s taking his shots at Gary Bettman begging the question if Parise is a hypocrite.
Parise spoke on Tuesday and the Star Tribune’s, Michael Russo published the following quotes from the star forward:

"” It’s terrible for the game. There’s no other way to put it. It’s bad for the game. It’s unfortunate for the fans. It’s brutal.”"

The former Devils all-star went on to throw gasoline on the fire when he delivered the following shot at Bettman:

"“You hope it doesn’t go too long, but it’s tough to grasp when you’ve got a guy in Gary Bettman bragging every year that we’re making ‘record revenue, record revenue, record this,’ and all of a sudden they want to take a quarter of what you’ve made away. That doesn’t make sense to anybody. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in.”"

Parise’s frustrations may be showing through in his choice of words and it’s understandable what he’s trying to say in regards to Bettman.  He’s a selfish, bull-headed, ego driven monster who has ruined the game we all love.  But for Parise to go out and say Bettman is bragging about record revenue and wanting to take it away is a little disturbing considering what type of contract the Wild just handed out to him.

The deal as we all remember is for 13-years, $98 million.  Talk about record revenue for Parise, he’ll never see another deal like this in his lifetime, partly because he’ll likely be retired and still making $4 million over his last three years.  Not many players are still playing at the age of 40, so one could argue that Parise took advantage of the situation and got a little greedy.  Granted Parise is not entirely to blame as the Wild were the ones who offered the front-end loaded contract.

Maybe a hypocrite is too strong of a word in this case.  It’s easy to appreciate Parise’s desire to play the game and it’s understandable he’s speaking out of pure frustration.  Sometimes words need to chosen in a careful manner as to not upset the apple cart but it’s nice to see how the player’s feel about Bettman.

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