From The Archive: Feeling Minnesota

As a result of those two innocuous events, Suter and Parise made a lot of people happy in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, don’t ya know? To be sure, they were happy, to the tune of a combined $196 million over the next 13 seasons. The Wild, who instantly became serious contenders in the Western Conference and have hitched their hopes to their two newest stars for everything from a Stanley Cup to economic viability to a Winter Classic to a publicly funded practice rink, were over the moon. Legions of fans, who bought up 2,000 season tickets in the days following the Fourth of July fireworks and snapped up $169 Parise and Suter sweaters as quickly as manufacturers could slap Nos. 11 and 20 and the nameplates on them, flocked back to the Wild after watching their charming and novel expansion team become the lethal combination of bad and boring the past couple of seasons.

In fact, the only people who weren’t thrilled with the developments were Nashville Predators GM David Poile, who lost a lynchpin defenseman in Suter and will likely lose another in Shea Weber before long; New Jersey Devils GM Lou Lamoriello, who lost his captain, inspirational leader and one of his most talented players; and, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who undoubtedly lost some credibility with the NHL Players’ Association in his attempts to convince the players that money-losing outfits such as the Wild can’t possibly support the kinds of big-money, long-term, cap-circumventing deals players are getting these days.

But first, back to how Parise and Suter got to where they are, which is home for Parise and close enough for Suter.

For Parise, it all began in 1967, the season the NHL had expanded from six to 12 teams and more than 100 NHL jobs suddenly materialized. It was just the opportunity Jean-Paul Parise, a player not quite good enough to cut it in the Original Six, was seeking. He was fast, incredibly tenacious and could score goals if only someone would give him the chance. He got it when the California Golden Seals, one of the six new teams, picked him up in the expansion draft from the Boston Bruins. Things were going so well, Parise thought he had the team made. During the last pre-season game that fall, the Seals were up 3-2 late in the game when Parise made a cross-ice pass that was intercepted. He took a penalty to prevent the ensuing scoring chance and the Seals gave up a power play goal while Parise sat in the penalty box feeling shame.

YOUR FAMILY COMES FIRST. IT WAS A HUGE CONSIDERATION IN ALL OF THIS- RYAN SUTER

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The way the senior Parise recalls it, Olmstead, the Seals first-ever coach, was incensed. Olmstead, you have to understand, was one of the most belligerent players of his era, a guy who used to scream at Jean Beliveau if he ever saw his center venturing to the corner to get a puck. Olmstead was enraged by both the bad pass and the costly penalty and let Parise know about it in a rather, well, pointed manner. What happened after that, as Jean-Paul put it, “was stupidity at my best. The part of the brain that understands consequences was not quite developed.”

Which is a polite way of saying Olmstead and Parise had a lot in common. Considering Parise almost decapitated referee Josef Kompalla in Game 8 of the Summit Series between Canada and Russia five years later, it was clear that two men with such bad tempers would never co-exist. “He came into the dressing room and said, ‘You little (expletive) frog, you make another mistake like that and I’ll ship you right back to Quebec,’ ” Parise recalled. “So me, being feisty and not understanding my place, I said, ‘F---you. First of all, I’m not from Quebec and just because I screwed up, that gives you no (expletive) right to start attacking my heritage.’ ”

The next morning, Parise was told he had been traded to the American League’s Rochester Americans and for a short time, feared he was headed back to the Northern Ontario outpost of Smooth Rock Falls to work in the paper mill for the rest of his life. But after 30 games with the Americans, Parise was called into the office of GM Joe Crozier and told he had just been traded to the Minnesota North Stars and would be in the lineup against the New York Rangers that night. A few years after, Parise met his second wife, Zach’s mother, on a North Stars road trip that she had won for being the team’s two millionth fan. Parise played nine seasons in Minnesota and put down roots after retiring, as an assistant coach of the North Stars, then a commercial insurance broker, then a coach and hockey director with the Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school hockey powerhouse that produced future NHLers such as his son, Sidney Crosby, Jack Johnson and Jonathan Toews.

Now the Parise roots in Minnesota run deep, which was a huge factor in Zach’s decision to come home permanently. The Parise tenacity and temper run pretty deep too, though not quite as much for the son as the father. “I’ve seen tape of him playing and he was a little more feisty than I was,” Zach said. “You see him throwing elbows at guys’ heads and slew-footing guys. He might have a little edge in that category, but I definitely got it all from him.”

For Suter, it all began at the University of Wisconsin, where he was a freshman for the hockey team and the former Becky Palmer was a junior working toward a degree in commercial real estate. One night at a party, Suter swiped her disposable camera, then asked a friend for her number so he could arrange a time to return it. That led to a courtship, which led to a marriage at a resort in Minnetonka (the same one, incidentally, where Parise was scheduled to hold his wedding reception July 21) to Palmer, who just happens to be from Bloomington, where the old North Stars used to play.

Who knows what would have happened had Parise not told Olmstead off or Suter not had the audacity to swipe a camera to get a date? To be sure, they wouldn’t have ended up in Minnesota to be closer to their families. And family had an enormous amount to do with their dual decision to play in there. As difficult as it is to believe they could have received more than $98 million each over 13 years to play somewhere else, both Parise and Suter left money on the table to commit to the Wild.

Suter is a three-and-a-half-hour drive from his parents’ home in Wisconsin, where his father Bob, a member of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team, still leaves his gold medal on the coffee table or in his sock drawer. As a kid, Ryan was able to take the bauble to school whenever he wanted for show and tell, which must have beaten the living daylights out of the kids who showed up with Star Wars action figures. Instead of driving 10 hours to Nashville to see their son play, the Suters can now do the trip in less than half the time and Becky, whose family owns a real estate company in Bloomington, can be closer to her parents. And Jean-Paul and Donna Parise can come to every home game now instead of just one or two a year.

When athletes justify their actions as being what’s best for them and their families, eyes roll and the B.S. meter often goes into overdrive, but the fact both players turned down more money to play close to a place where the temperature occasionally dips to minus-40 – Celsius or Fahrenheit, it’s all the same when it’s that cold – gives an indication just how much family ties had to do with their decision. “Your family comes first,” Suter said. “You have to have a happy family to support you. You’re gone a lot on the road. Family was a huge consideration in all of this.”

Or perhaps it had something to do with Tom Gilbert. The moment Wild GM Chuck Fletcher acquired Gilbert from the Edmonton Oilers at the trade deadline, speculation began it was a move designed to attract Suter, who is a good friend of Gilbert’s from their days at Wisconsin. He also happens to be a childhood friend of Parise from Bloomington. Fletcher scoffs at the notion, saying the Wild were in desperate need of a puck-moving defenseman after trading Brent Burns to the San Jose Sharks last summer and Marek Zidlicky during the season and suddenly the Wild went from having three right-shot, puck-moving D-men to just one in undersized Jared Spurgeon. But players talk. We know that by the fact Jordan and Eric Staal made no secret of their desire to play together, as did Parise and Suter.

Whatever the machinations, the Wild got the two undisputed biggest fish in the free agency pond. They overpaid for both in salary and term and intend on dealing with the cap implications as they apply to a new collective bargaining agreement when that day comes. But unrestricted free agency is always a risk regardless of the player. And if you’re going to take that risk, why not do it on two 27-year-old elite players who are theoretically entering their primes, have tons of character and a track record of being leaders on winning teams on and off the ice? “There was much less risk agreeing to the offers,” Fletcher said, “than in not agreeing to them.”

People have asked themselves since the signings, “When did Suter and Parise suddenly become worth almost $100 million?” The answer is the moment multiple teams offered it to them. While some teams and their GMs stay away from contracts like this because they can’t afford them or they’re philosophically opposed to them, the Wild basically turned their backs on those factors, even though you could argue both apply to them.

Really, you have to give owner Craig Leipold marks for chutzpah. Less than three months before signing Parise and Suter, Leipold was quoted as saying the Wild continue to lose money and, “We need to fix our system. We need to fix how much we’re spending now,” then signed off on two contracts that are Exhibit A and B in the argument about why the system is broken in the first place. Then, after committing $196 million to two players, he turned the news conference introducing the players into an opportunity to pressure the mayor of St. Paul into helping the Wild finance a practice rink which would be attached to the Xcel Energy Center and cost $45-55 million.

After all, you can only sell so many sweaters and, while their attendance had suffered in recent years, there’s no way the Wild will even come close to recouping the money they’re spending on Parise and Suter with increased ticket sales. The Wild had an announced average of 17,772 last season and the capacity of the Xcel Energy Center is only 18,064. People in Minnesota have 10,000 lakes that freeze over in the winter and their love of hockey runs long and deep. They love playing hockey, they love high school hockey and they’re absolutely bonkers over the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, but the North Stars before them and the Wild now have found that love for them can indeed be fleeting. Just because they’re in a hockey heartland doesn’t mean people will drop thousands of dollars for season tickets to watch an inferior product.

THERE WAS MUCH LESS RISK AGREEING TO THE OFFERS THAN NOT AGREEING TO THEM- CHUCK FLETCHER

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They should be able to secure a lucrative Winter Classic and might get some of that public money they’ve been seeking. If Parise and Suter bring them the success they expect, local television and radio deals, along with sponsorship contracts, will undoubtedly be worth more.

(The Wild’s money matters are also under the spotlight with the spectre of minority owner Phil Falcone’s legal issues looming. Faclone, who owns 30 percent of the franchise, has been accused of fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Falcone has denied any wrongdoing and is fighting the accusations, while Leipold insists his partner’s case will have no effect on the Wild.)

But it still doesn’t add up, unless both players and the Wild deliver with a significant number of long playoff runs and home dates over the next 13 years. Leipold acknowledged as much when he promised the day the Wild introduced the players that there would be, “playoffs, more playoffs, deeper playoffs.

“Clearly, our team needs to make the playoffs and have some long playoff runs at various junctures of these contracts to have them make sense,” Fletcher said. “But there are a whole host of intangibles that are hard to quantify. In terms of franchise value, does this help us land a Winter Classic and achieve some things in our marketplace from a political perspective? But revenues are going to go up and our chances of success are going to go up over the terms of these contracts.”

That’s a lot of pressure to put on two players, but neither Parise nor Suter has ever seemed bothered by increased expectations. Rick Nash made it clear early in his trade demand process that he did not want to go to the Toronto Maple Leafs, a sentiment shared by many hometown players who don’t want the pressure and expectation of living in that kind of fishbowl. Star players from Quebec have avoided the Montreal Canadiens for the same reason. Both Parise in New Jersey and Suter in Nashville previously played in markets where they could hide pretty easily and escape scrutiny. But hockey fans in Minnesota are rabid and passionate and knowledgeable and they’re much more likely to take issue with blown defensive coverage or an ill-advised pass up the middle of the ice.

There will be no more hiding now. “I’m not looking to hide anywhere,” Parise said. “I’ve got nothing to hide. I don’t care about that stuff at all.”

That’s a good thing, because the Wild just painted a bullseye on themselves when it comes to their Western Conference opponents next season. Even without Parise and Suter, the Wild were a team on the rise, stockpiling quality prospects and young players at a mind-boggling rate. The signings will push a few of those players down the depth chart and provide the Wild with a depth of talent they’ve never had before. Of all their prospects, Mikael Granlund is the most ready to step in and will have a chance to center the second line between Devon Setoguchi and Pierre-Marc Bouchard. Parise will almost certainly play the left side on the top line with Mikko Koivu and Dany Heatley. “I don’t want to single anyone out, but you play with a center like Mikko, he’s arguably one of the best two-way centers in the league,” Parise said while flanked by Wild coach Mike Yeo. “I always thought he and I would play well together. I’m not dropping hints or anything, but…”

But for the Wild to achieve the status of contender, it can’t come down to just two players, regardless of their pedigree, accomplishments or how much money they make. The Wild’s other players and prospects must continue to progress. Young roster players such as Marco Scandella and Justin Falk must improve. Prospects such as Granlund, Johan Larsson. Jonas Brodin, Charlie Coyle, Jason Zucker and Matt Dumba will have to fill roster holes or be traded to fill them. The projected fourth line of Zenon Konopka between Torrey Mitchell and Darroll Powe must make the Wild a more difficult opponent. Dany Heatley must emerge from the funk he has been in the past couple of seasons and the way Fletcher sees it, Koivu and Bouchard combined for 92 games and 66 points last season. If both are healthy, that could be another 50-60 points, which is tantamount to adding another roster player for nothing. “The talent level is better, the depth is better and the competition for spots is a lot better,” Fletcher said. “We still have a lot of work to do, but we’re significantly better than we were. We don’t pretend everything is going to work out perfectly, but it’s a really good start.” 

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