Breaking News: Wild to buyout Zach Parise and Ryan Suter

A busy off-season for Bill Guerin and the Minnesota Wild has just begun. News broke today from Michael Russo of TheAthletic that the Wild were buying out the contracts of both Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.

Morel to the story is that, most people in the Wild fanbase expected Zach Parise or even Victor Rask to be bought out. Absolutely no one could’ve thought that both players who signed to play for the Wild together would be bought out together.

The Minnesota Wild also followed up on the news by making it official.

What does this mean for the Minnesota Wild?

These buyouts in themselves mean a lot for the club, since they both signed the same structured contract in terms of term and dollar amount, both buyouts will look the same. The cap hit in the first year will be $2.3 million for each and then escalate up to $6.3 million in 22-23 followed by two years of a hefty $7.3 million cap hit for each Parise and Suter, and then the final four years of the buyout will only cost the Wild a cap hit of $833,333.

What these buyouts could also mean is a signal in change of direction, to put it straight, if Parise and Suter aren’t going to win the Wild a cup, Bill Guerin has to move on and as we’ve seen, he’s pulled the trigger on that.

Bill Guerin knows he needs to free up as much money as possible to get Kirill Kaprizov and Kevin Fiala signed and by initiating these buyout it gives the Wild some more flexibility in the later years of the buyouts to get creative on the structure of the Kaprizov and Fiala contracts.

The last point is expansion. It’s pretty cut and dry here, with Parise and Suter no longer on the roster, it will open up two protection spots for the Wild seen as they would’ve been stuck protecting both players due to their no-move clauses.

Final thoughts

Overall, Zach Parise and Ryan Suter had a good run with the Minnesota Wild throughout the years but, fans knew that these large hefty contracts would catch up someday and Bill Guerin has started to execute his plan towards helping the Wild’s future becoming easier.

*Info from CapFriendly.com was used in this piece.