Wild Enter 2024-25 Season with Highest Dead Cap in the NHL
The Minnesota Wild will enter the 2024-25 season with the highest amount of dead cap in the NHL at $15,168,588. Was buying out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter worth it?
There will be 11 teams in the NHL next year that will have a dead cap space of zero dollars. The Minnesota Wild are not one of them.
In fact, they will have the highest dead cap hit next season. This includes buyouts, retained salary, recapture penalty and overages. The Wild won't have any retained salary on players but they do have buyouts and recapture penalties.
Next year will be the last big season of the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts. They will have a cap hit of $14,743,588 still from the two buyouts. That is $7,371,794 paid to each of the two.
They also will have a dead cap of $425,000 that was result of carryover bonus overages. Which is a penalty from the previous season due to performance bonuses that resulted in the team exceeding the salary cap upper limit.
That means the Wild will have $15,168,588 in dead cap next season. The next highest team is the Nashville Predators at $11,805,556. Which is because of the buyouts of Kyle Turris and Matt Duchene, plus the retained salary on Mattias Ekholm and Ryan Johansen.
The question becomes, was buying out Parise and Suter worth it?
Parise and Suter were signed until 2025 and were a part of the Wild since 2013. The Wild made the playoffs in eight of nine seasons with Parise and Suter as the assistant captains.
In a matter of a year after the buyouts, Wild General Manager and President of Hockey Operations Bill Guerin changed the whole leadership core and head coach. This completely changed the team's culture to what we know now.
The very next season after the two buyouts Minnesota set a franchise record for most wins with 53 and did it with $12.74 million being paid to Parise and Suter who weren't on the team.
They finished that season with a 53-22-7 record for 113 points and followed it up the next season with a 46-25-11 season for 103 points.
The next season (this year) was a little bit tougher. The Wild missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2018-19 season and the second time since 2011-12, which was the season before the Wild signed Parise and Suter.
You could say this year the dead cap space affected the Wild the most. The almost 15 million they had tied up in Parise and Suter stopped them from getting better depth players to fill in the lineup. They ultimately missed the playoffs because of it.
"It was an up and down year that way. I have to look at myself in the mirror and what could I have done better," Guerin said at the end of the season availability. "I feel like I could have done a better job at insulating our team, insulating our top players, creating more depth within the organization. I feel that’s something that we fell short on. That’s something I need to get better at."
Maybe the lack of depth in the organization was the reason why the Wild missed the playoffs. They started 5-10-4 and fired their head coach and assistant coach. After that they went 34-24-5.
After John Hynes took over the Wild were 13th in the NHL with 73 points. That is a 95 point pace which could've been enough to make the playoffs.
With more scoring depth in the organization, better goaltending, and being able to play at the pace they did under Hynes, there is enough reasons to believe the Wild could make the playoffs despite the $15,168,588 in dead cap next season. Going far in the playoffs might be a different story though.
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