The signings that Minnesota Wild, New Jersey Devils, and Nashville Predators fans will never forget: Zach Parise, fresh off a Stanley Cup Final appearance in New Jersey, signs a 13-year contract with the Minnesota Wild, and Ryan Suter does the same.
Not only is that a concept that seems foreign to most hockey fans who started watching after the 2012 lockout, but it's also a shock that bringing in two of the best players at the time did not get the Minnesota Wild their desired Stanley Cup.
A crazy deal that ended with the Minnesota Wild buying out the remainder of Parise and Suter's contracts in the 2021 season is one that often gets looked back on with questions. What if the Wild had never signed Parise and Suter in the first place?
The Minnesota Wild Perspective
Would much have changed for the Minnesota Wild if they hadn't signed Parise and Suter to 13-year, $98 million contracts? Sure, there were other players they could have signed for fewer years and less money. Hindsight is 20/20, and knowing how Parise and Suter's careers ended, it's easy to think they could have simply dodged that bullet. Yet, it's hard to dispute how much of an impact Parise and Suter had on the team at the height of their careers.
Parise was, in 2017, according to Gone Puck Wild contributor Danny Lambert, "One of the best offensive weapons in Wild and league history."
The Wild made the playoffs eight times in the Parise/Suter years and set a franchise record for the best record in the first 41 games of the 2016 season. Parise had four seasons where he put up over 40 points, and Suter had two. Even one season before the buyouts, there was impetus to not trade Parise.
Ultimately, the Wild didn't get what they wanted out of Parise and Suter, which was a Stanley Cup. They never made a deep run for the Cup. But would they have gotten there without Parise and Suter? It's unlikely, given the offensive and defensive talent they had at their peak.
The biggest oversight for the Wild was the duration of the contracts. They could not have known that Parise would have injury issues, or that the Seattle Kraken franchise would come in and put them in a difficult spot for the expansion draft. But they could have foreseen that 13 years is a long time. Foresight could have told them that there would be new up-and-coming stars that would put Parise and Suter's careers in perspective. They were forced to learn that lesson by buying out both players, leaving them four years of cap space they couldn't spend elsewhere.
The NHL Perspective
The Minnesota Wild weren't the only people to learn their lesson from the 13-year contracts; the NHL as a whole changed completely after these contracts were signed. These contracts had the biggest impact on one of the rule changes coming out of the 2012 lockout: one that set the maximum contract limit at eight seasons. Teams could no longer get away with paying the players a lot of money and hoping they'd retire before the end of the contract. If the Wild hadn't signed the Parise and Suter contracts, would we have seen that rule in effect today?
In 2026, we can look back at the Parise/Suter years as something of a misstep, but one that brought the Wild some of their mid-range playoff success that they are still building off of today.
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