Article: The Ryan Suter Buyout Is Officially A Failed Experiment

[Tony Abbott]

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[Citizen Strife]

Those recapture penalties would have put the Wild way further up the creek than they are now.  No Kaprizov, no Boldy, probably no EEK, Fiala could have left sooner.  That's a Sword of Damocles than can't be underestimated.  Even if Suter and Parise never did retire, Guerin got cap flexibility for that season and avoided the worst case scenario.  We didn't know Parise would score 15-20 goals for the Islanders.  He sure wasn't really doing much else while here.  Isn't he just sitting at home this season anyway or did he get signed anywhere?

It was a risky play either way.  Guerin decided to drive into a ditch rather than drive into a canyon.

[Imyourhuckleberry]

So, you're essentially telling me the Wild could have Suter and Gustav Nyquist rather than Goligoski and Johansson?

The writing was on the wall for Parise when they were scratching him or giving him 4th line minutes, even though he still had a little left in the tank and proved it in the playoffs his last year with the Wild.

The Suter decision was a much larger surprise and while he wasn't worth his contract, it seemed clear he still had a few solid years left.

Guerin wanted to go all-in on a culture shift and it's difficult to know how that would have gone with Suter around. One might have thought that as a former player, he could have some real talks with Suter to get him on board with Guerin's vision for the Wild's future before simply going the buy-out route, but that doesn't seem like something Guerin explored.

Hopefully the Wild get a high enough pick that they can secure another solid top 4 D-man or top 6 forward from this draft.

With the buy-outs, it was always going to be a 5-year plan with pain points in years 3 and 4. They were quite competitive in years 1 and 2 when they had some cap flexibility. Now they are in the worst of it, but there is reason to believe in light at the end of the tunnel, with Yurov and Wallstedt becoming fixtures for the 25-26 season, if not sooner.

[mnfaninnc]

Overall, we're paying an extra $2m over the 4 year period, and have filled the roster vacancy with a worse player. I still believe we needed Middleton on defense, and would have done that deal anyway. Losing Cole and Soucy was a bigger deal than most will admit.

With that, we paid $2m more to not have someone bitching about not getting 25 minutes a night and demanding to be on PP1. We also took out a main leader that wasn't too keen on the younger crowd taking his spot, especially in OT, on the PP and for his minutes. 

I can't say that the replacement was worth it, but having Suter out of the locker room might have been. We did draft his replacement immediately that summer. Carson Lambos is his name. Yet, he is still not ready. Could it be that drafting Hunt and O'Rourke the previous year that the FO thought they would both be here by now?

So, in the final year before the buyouts, we saw the direct impact Suter had on Spurgeon's game. It was pretty bad. Suter could no longer cover the ice for Spurgeon if he rushed. 

I think the buyouts were the right thing to do, maybe a year too early, but, I think Guerin may have whiffed on the replacement. Goligoski had a fine 1/2 year here before completely falling off the cliff where he was rewarded with another 2 year deal. These extra years that Guerin adds on for 35+ contracts is really a killer. 

Maybe we had the right guy here all along and shouldn't have resigned Goligoski? Maybe Kulikov could have been the placeholder on the 3rd pairing? Maybe we really did need to push the kids a little harder? 

My conclusion is a little different, while I do believe the buyouts were the right move (maybe a year too early), I think counting on Goligoski being the replacement the whole time was probably fool's gold. 

[MNCountryLife]

I'm glad they are gone.  Couldn't stand Suter's wimpy wrist shot on the power play.  I always liked Parise but it was becoming clear that the mileage was affecting him.

[FredJohnson]

The Ryan Suter Buyout Is Officially A Failed Experiment
It was worth getting GMRS out of the organization. 

[WildFanBjorn]

Wouldn't it be great if the decision was based solely on the statistics you are using to support your argument. Alex Goligoski was NEVER intended to be a one for one replacement for Suter. He is, however, a Minnesota hockey guy with an abundance of experience to share in a locker room where a. he wants to be, and b. he is not a distraction. Just those 2 factors make it reasonable for BFG to go the direction he did. This article may show that dumping Ryan Suter's contract (I'll separate his situation from Zach Parise's) was a mistake based off replacement minutes over the 3 years but from where I sit I cannot tell the difference. We went after the wrong defenseman when we brought him in. The real blue line monster from that Preds team was clearly Shea Weber. We spent a lot of money and a whole lot of time having to listen to announcers talk about what a "technician" Suter was during his enormous minutes of playing time. That was code for "not physical." Wouldn't hit anyone, ever, weak in the corners, weak out in front, just weak. No one, and I stress NO ONE, feared playing against him. His "best hits" seem to now be the cheap shots he has taken against Kirill knowing that we still aren't big enough to exact revenge. He should be blasted every time we play Dallas. Our roster should be counting the opportunities to extract the contract $'s wasted from him. It also needs to be said that he was poison to the franchise in the locker room. Spoiled to the point of costing wins and developing cohesiveness. Your article, though well thought out, and well written, misses the point of dumping a scrub like Suter at the first opportunity, no reason to regret it at all.

[MrCheatachu]

Last year after the playoffs, CapFriendly posted a list of the top searched players on their 'Buy Out Calculator' tool.  Guess who was the top player on that list?

Anyways, Dallas could buy-out the last year of Suter's contract for $783k in '24-'25 and $1.4M in '25-26...it's a damn near consensus that a 40 year old Suter with a Cap Hit of $3.65M next season isnt worth that buyout. 

His on-ice product still looks like elephants trudging through peanut butter, and Dallas doesn't have any KwikTrips.

I'd honestly be more interested in a writeup of how the Parise buyout hurt us more than Suter...Parise is a guy who's got the Grit that BG fell in love with, had no problem parking himself in the front of the net to get greasy goals.  His past two seasons with a reduced workload of 15-16 ATOI, he still got 35 points per season...how does our picture look if we have Parise instead of Mojo?

 

Edited January 18 by MrCheatachu

[AKwildkraken]

I think Suter would still be here if had waved his no move contract for the Seattle expansion draft.  We wanted to protect Dumba (for the second time), Fiala, or Ek, and buying out Suter and Parise could do that.  

[Pewterschmidt]

55 minutes ago, MrCheatachu said:

'd honestly be more interested in a writeup of how the Parise buyout hurt us more than Suter.

Didn't Parise's recent retirement validate BG's decision to buy Parise out?

[MrCheatachu]

5 minutes ago, Pewterschmidt said:

Didn't Parise's recent retirement validate BG's decision to buy Parise out?

No.

Let's ignore the fact that Parise is still an UFA and he's not officially announced his retirement, so if he had a contract he might still be playing...or interested in LTIR.

But the max cap hit for the cap recapture penalty is limited to the player's AAV.  So if Parise would be with the Wild and have retired this season, the Wild would be on the hook to pay 2 seasons at $7,538,462 subtracted off the 2 seasons salary of $1M so they would owe $7,538,462 this season and $5,538,462 next season.

The buyout took away the uncertainty for the wild of say, getting Parise to waive his NTC sending him to NYI, filling up our cap space to the brim, and then having Parise retire this season and have a $7.5M bill come due this season and next when we've already signed $7.5M worth of players.  

Guys like Suter and Parise might retire a year early to foot Billy G with an unexpected $7.54M cap hit because...screw that guy.

 

[bisopher]

And in other Wild defensemen news, the Athletic is reporting that Spurgeon is being shut down for the season for "hip and back surgery".

Lottery, anyone?

[Sviginak]

Oh, great, the last Ryan Suter buyout article! Thanks, Tony.

[Pewterschmidt]

1 hour ago, bisopher said:

And in other Wild defensemen news, the Athletic is reporting that Spurgeon is being shut down for the season for "hip and back surgery".

Lottery, anyone?

Spurge is becoming quite a liability.  Given his past in playoffs and now repeated injuries

[Protec]

^^^

Correct for now. Some of the guys who had the surgery and repaired nagging items have come back to be solid. 7M+ is a serious cost for your top 4 RD so it's a concern if he can't come back and be at the level the Wild need. 

[Stillwaitingforacuprun]

Been saying this from the beginning...Love, hate, doesn't matter...you can't in any fricken way buy out 2 major contracts the same year...especially to a teams fans who for 20+ years not counting the North Stars havent seen a parade yet... We are no closer to winning anything than we were in 2000... For all you guys who say we're better off without Suter...how about now?

[Protec]

Plenty of other teams without a Cup in the past two decades.

This is such total dead-horse territory. We hated him for years while he was here. Now everyone wants to cry about Guerin and play the blame game cause the Wild regressed badly with injuries. 

Suter is an aging defenseman who is decent on a top team but he's not dominant or carrying the water for a Cup team. 

Just a buttload of complaining lately. The Wild need to embrace their shortfalls this year and get a top pick. I don't expect MN to beat playoff teams this year anymore. They're sloppy and out-classed most games. They give up 5-7 goals against top offensive teams. That's how it's gonna be. They're in the bottom six in the NHL. Bummer, but that's how it is.

[FredJohnson]

7 hours ago, WildFanBjorn said:

he was poison to the franchise in the locker room

Thus the "GMRS" moniker. Dude was/is a doosh.

[raithis]

5 hours ago, AKwildkraken said:

I think Suter would still be here if had waved his no move contract for the Seattle expansion draft.  We wanted to protect Dumba (for the second time), Fiala, or Ek, and buying out Suter and Parise could do that.  

THIS.  The reason we bought them out in the same year was because of the expansion draft.  If we had kept Suter, we would have lost someone better than Soucy.  Granted, I liked Soucy, but think of where we would be now had we lost Ek or Fiala for nothing and had both Suter and Parise getting to the point where they could drop their boat anchor matching contracts straight through the floor and sink us.  The Wild had a lot of players tied up in clauses that they would have been forced to protect.  The cost of keeping locker room cancer Suter is far worse than this article suggests. 

Why is it that people seem to completely forget about the expansion draft and that it was better to toss those anchors overboard?  Yes, we're still dragging it though the soft reset that we don't want to call a rebuild even though it totally is, but the prospect cupboards were pretty much bare and we would be building them back up during that time anyway. 

So many people keep complaining about the buyouts and signing some players (even though it helps cover some of the span that most of those prospects will need to get ready) and that there's no place for prospects to come in (even though we have a number of players on expiring contracts, more next year, and roster spots and lines aren't set in stone) and the need to tank (and then complaining when we don't win) and that Dean was fired (even though he only did well in the regular season) and that every year is the same (even though it's very different given that we have more players with higher ceilings and a deeper prospect pool than we've ever had). 

There's pain before getting to the other side of this.  Building through the draft also means needing to be patient until those players are ready.  Had we more NHL-caliber prospects in the pipeline who we could have put in place of some of the players we chose to re-sign, we likely don't keep some of the vets.  We don't have those young prospects though.  At this point, even with limited ice time, Lettieri and Adam Raska has shown me more than either Beckman or Walker.  Not that I see either of those two as more than fringe AHLers, but given that Beckman and Walker look like they could be career AHLers unless they make some sort of change, it certainly wouldn't shock me if barely play in the NHL their entire careers.  

[Gavan]

Do the math for trading or releasing Parisi and Suter at any point, or their respective retirements at any time, under the league rules in force at the time of original signings. Factor in the team eating salary if traded. The current situation reflects a league imposed penalty on the franchise that I suspect will be compensated for. Perhaps in this lottery.

[Mateo3xm]

20 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

Losing Cole and Soucy was a bigger deal than most will admit.

I agree with this. Those guys were extremely valuable.

 

20 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

We did draft his replacement immediately that summer. Carson Lambos is his name.

I think it’s WAY too early to say that. I could see him turning out to be more like a 4th dman vs a number 1 dman

[Mateo3xm]

18 hours ago, WildFanBjorn said:

The real blue line monster from that Preds team was clearly Shea Weber.

I think that’s backwards in lots of ways.

everyone was saying Suter would be nothing without Weber and it was more so the other way around.

Suter was 2nd in Norris trophy voting in 12-13. Weber had a career year in 13-14 but about 5-6 years after we signed Suter, Weber was never the same because of injuries.

 

[Dean]

Great article!  It was Bills choice to buyout. He was a new gm and felt the locker room needed it , plus penalties if they retired.  So idk. It is what it is. I think what he did after buyouts is concerning. The goose deal , never selling at trade deadline when it’s obvious we can’t win a round. Extensions with clauses an I guess the new cba says when you give out those clauses they immediately go on existing contract. So you’re not moving those guys for roster spots or anything.  After the way are vets have played this year. Father Time is catching them. He started this season with no depth an no cap space to call up or grab a player off the wire. He parted ways with cap guy and now has NHL doing his accounting for a season.  Now he’s talking about trading for a spurg replacement. Why would they waste this so called draft capital to replace spurg for 40 games when your  9 points out of playoffs and bottom of leauge.? Just fighting to stay mediocre and maintain that 20 th overall pIck

     I disagree that we’ve built up this prospect pool with higher ceilings than we’ve ever had. Fletcher drafted the same 20tg overalls and had a few better picks than 20. Just like bill. Fletchers guys are still on team an in nhl. Maybe bill has better eye for talent. To early to tell but the prospects are of the same ceilings as Fletcher had.  Like Lou Naane was saying. A 20 th overall is no where near the level Of a top 5. You need high end talent. You don’t get that from 20 th overall. Ek is like 15 th round pick and he’s not close to a # 1 like Mcdavid,.  Rossi is a 9 th. Not even close to Hughes a #1 pick. Lambos was around 15 th he’s not a Quinn Hughes. 
    My point is we should have been collecting picks and prospects by selling at deadline past few years and getting more bites at apple. Then come out of buyouts with money and prospects. Now we’re coming out with more 20 th overalls and no money. . Stupid in my opinion. 

[B1GKappa97]

I am pretty sure that buying out Parise and Suter is the only reason we were able to even afford Kevin Fiala for the 2021 season.

And being able to potentially keep him as an RFA, rather than being forced to immediately trade him, is what allowed us to sell him to the Kings for their 1st and Faber (who is turning out to be an absolute stud/real team leader.) And that 2021 season undoubtedly raised his trade value, considering he only had a couple 20-goal seasons before scoring almost as many points as the previous 2 years combined to go with a ridiculous +23 rating (which he has not come anywhere near in LA.)

This year sucks for sure, but honestly this team might be better off for the buy-outs in the long run. Especially if we get a draft pick from the 2024 class that turns into another top-line defenseman to pair with Faber for the next decade plus. 

Edited January 19 by B1GKappa97

[B1GKappa97]

22 minutes ago, Dean said:

 I think what he did after buyouts is concerning. The goose deal , never selling at trade deadline when it’s obvious we can’t win a round.

To be fair to Billy, I don't think that was obvious during those seasons. I mean the 2021-2022 season was a franchise record for points and we had two legit scoring lines! 2022-2023 we were still a 100+ point team despite losing Fiala in the trade. 

There was definitely reason to believe that those clubs could've, and arguably they absolutely should've, gone further than they did.