Haven't logged in for about 2 weeks. Figure I better add my
here, at least.
July 4th was a WONDERFUL day! Got home from a 40 mile trining ride to my wife telling me that Suter signed. I go to look on my phone and she tells me Parise signed, too. I was surprised, elated, and felt the hair raise on my arms. Signing them was HUGE for the franchise. It re-energized one of the most passionate fanbases in the NHL. When you can get 10,000 and more to show up for a high school championship game, you know your state has a love affair with hockey.
As for the signings and the money, I think that most Wild fans are OK with it. You look at how the contracts are structured, and you see that they're very frontloaded, with HUGH signing bonuses due for the first 2 years. What that does is foce them to develop their youngsters, something that they were planning on doing, anyways. We (Wild fans) have known that they have a stockpile of talent coming up in the next couple years. Some of them include Granlund, Brodin, Bullmer, Zucker, Gustafson, Coyle, etc. I've read that they have 7 of the top 49 prospects in their system. The frontloaded deals allow them to bring those guys up and develop them as a team, and then have the flexibility to resign them to larger deals when their rookie contracts are up. The fanbase was excited about all these young guys even before signing Suter and Parise. They add instant depth, and make the Wild relevant in the league. Remember that they were leading the league in December last season when a rash of injuries derailed their season. They'll have a top front line that will be able to score with anyone in the league, and a solid second line. Their D may be a bit suspect, but even with a lack of depth back there last year, they were reasonably solid, so I'm not too worried about that. But this move wasn't about this next year or the year after. This was about the next 5-8 years, with both Suter and Parise being just 27. I see big things on the horizon for this team after these signings.
I'm glad some friends of ours asked us to split their season tickets with them.
The X will be rocking for the next few years, I hope.
And as Parise is a Fighting Sioux, of course we had to go get jerseys on Thursday. He he.
