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Minnesota Wild: Examining buyout candidates

By Brandon Quast

ST PAUL, MINNESOTA - OCTOBER 20: Zach Parise #11 of the Minnesota Wild looks on during the game against the Montreal Canadiens at Xcel Energy Center on October 20, 2019 in St Paul, Minnesota. The Wild defeated the Canadiens 4-3. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images)
ST PAUL, MINNESOTA - OCTOBER 20: Zach Parise #11 of the Minnesota Wild looks on during the game against the Montreal Canadiens at Xcel Energy Center on October 20, 2019 in St Paul, Minnesota. The Wild defeated the Canadiens 4-3. (Photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images) /
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Although the NHL’s buy-out window opens officially 24 hours after the Stanley Cup is awarded, most teams will wait until Friday to conduct any buy-out business. The Minnesota Wild have two candidates that are destined for buy-out and here we will discuss them.

Zach Parise

Zach Parise was signed to a massive 13-year $98 million deal just a hair over nine years ago. At the time, Parise was just coming off of a Stanley Cup loss with the New Jersey Devils. Chuck Fletcher reached out and brought the top free agent home to the state of hockey.

In the first few years of the contract, Parise showed that, when healthy, he was worth it with no complaints.  He was scoring and playing all over the ice where he was needed. Fast forward to today, this passed season, Parise saw a severe dip in his playing time, often finding himself a healthy scratch which also affected his on-ice production.

When he did play, he still managed to muster up 11 goals and seven assists in 45 games this season – that mostly from playing a fourth line role.

It could be time for Parise and the Wild to part ways, especially with the impending youth movement with Marco Rossi and Matt Boldy vying for roster spots next season.

As far as cost, the Wild would hold a cap hit on Parise until 2028-2029 unless traded prior to buy-out.

Once a free agent, Parise would likely find himself looking for a prove-it contract on a team looking for a depth veteran that will play in the bottom six.

Other notes on Parise are that he could be dangled to another team like the Seattle Kraken whom will have a ton of cap room in order to ultimately initiate the buy-out.

Victor Rask

Man oh man, Victor Rask is a player a lot of Wild fans wanted gone before he had even hit the ice this season, once he hit the ice, he found himself playing with the eventual Calder Trophy winner, Kirill Kaprizov. There isn’t much other reward to Rask other than he played with Kaprizov.

He wasn’t great at all in his defensive zone and was often seen as slow and sluggish, something that the Wild need to move on from. In my opinion, Rask should’ve been gone last off-season but the Wild weren’t in a position to do such a thing then.

Now would be perfect, just as it was explained with Parise, the Wild are having a youth movement with Rossi and Boldy and room will have to made but roster spot wise and  salary cap wise.

The buy-out for Rask would come off after the 2022-2023 season and you couldn’t go wrong with the cap hit of $1.3 million over both years of the buy-out.

If not bought out, Rask could potentially be picked up by Seattle if  Bill Guerin can manage to bribe Kraken GM Ron Francis enough.

Final thoughts

After a long hard look, it seems destined that either Parise or Rask (or both) won’t be on the roster for next season, the inclination I have is, which ever one the Wild initiate a buy-out for my indicate the final fate for the other.

*All stats/info was found at NHL.com & Capfriendly.com

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