Yes and no. He would have to plan for that possibility, yes, but it's not like he couldn't ever work around that scenario if it ever arose. The quick take to the situation we were in is that the cap recapture situation couldn't get worse for us than if they had retired this season as a Wild or were traded yesterday and retired right before the end of their contracts (the only significant difference in the latter is the timing of the dead cap). And of course some retained salary in a trade could have helped mitigate that threat as well. Now neither of those worst case scenarios will happen, because we decided for worst case option 3. We had just hit the peak of the cap recapture penalty. And to celebrate that threshold we voluntarily decided to take nearly the full cap recapture penalty in the form of a longer buyout penalty with known years of impact. No amount of "locker room issues" or "Mathew Dumba has to be protected at all costs" conundrums are worth that crippling decision.
I think of it this way. It's like Bill Guerin stepping into a company and finding out that it there's a realistic chance of bankruptcy outside of his control in the next four years. On the other hand there's also a very realistic chance that bankruptcy will not be necessary with the outside market conditions and internal moves that could be made. And his decision? File bankruptcy now and go through the full 4+ years of pain simply to avoid the mere possibility that it might happen in the future when he can't control the timing. It doesn't make any logical sense.
Before we talk about if a buyout made sense for Parise, I think it's important to talk about why Parise was on the outs with the team. Yes, he was declining, and we knew that likely to happen at his age. This isn't a surprise to anyone paying attention. Yes, he was brought in by a previous regime, and he isn't one of the new regime's "guys". And of course his contract was what it was. They couldn't change it. However, it is Guerin and company's job to manage that difficult situation. It's their job to manage the relationship with their players. You have to play the cards you are dealt, not play it like the hand you wish you had. And there it's safe to say that Guerin and gang couldn't have handled it much worse. Clearly the relationship was Parise was awful. It's the GM's job to manage the situation so it doesn't get to this point with a player with a contract in which he holds all the power. This is why you may have to accept a "bad" trade before a player declines and doesn't live up to a contract with no painless out clauses. This is why you may have to play a player in a role you don't think he deserves until you can separate on terms more favorable to the team. It's ironic that in the playoffs he showed them up by scoring the same amount of goals and points as any other player, including Kaprizov, with a fraction of their ice time and with 0 seconds on the PP. We can be upset at Parise all we want, but none of that absolves the GM and staff from the responsibility of managing the situation. And one cannot say they did it well. They are at minimum partly responsible for the situation they are in right now. It's time Minnesota sports fans stop giving out free passes. If the "right decision" at the time is one that brought on by previous mistakes, it was not good management.
Suter: "a contributor"? That's all you're giving him? One of the four defensemen that essentially tied for #1 in ice time for one of the best defense cores in the league? One of the most important pieces to special teams? That's a little more than contributing. That's an important piece to the puzzle. Let's say he does decline rapidly. You know what's crazy? A Suter healthy scratch at 7.538m in year three and four is still better than a bought-out Suter at 7.371m and a league-minimum player scratched instead! There was literally no risk to keeping Suter for the time being. His cap recapture situation improves from here on out. He was an important part of the team that now must be replaced, creating an even larger cap/talent issue. The relationship was at minimum amicable, and he wanted to play here, so there wasn't a risk with sudden non-injury retirement. Now he's public evidence to show the league that Minnesota might not be the team you want to play for. Buying him out now is the single worst move I've seen a wild GM make.
