Red Wings signed Jonas Gustavsson from the Maple Leafs. He is expected to back up Howard. Also, Suter met with Ken Holland and was given an offer of about $90 million.
Sorry SloMo, Minny ended up bagging both Parise and Suter, although 'Wings reportedly did make a serious push especially for Suter. Huge contracts for both though, 13 years with an average cap hit of 7.5M with full NMCs - Minny's FO needs to hope and pray that these guys will fit in and produce, because they'll be very difficult to move if they won't.
True, but Minny is in a difficult situation because they have a reputation of being a franchise where no free agent wants to end up, so they either have to be OK with being that type of a franchise and be content with only signing 2nd or 3rd tier free agents - or they can give 1st tier FAs these type of deals to get them on their roster. And even then those FAs have to interested in coming to Minny for some reason or another as with Parise, Suter and Cullen. After I looked at the structure of the contracts more closely, they're not as bad as I initially thought. They are very heavily frontloaded with big bonuses for the first years. While their cap hits will be huge in the beginning, those will become much more affordable in the latter part of the contracts. So, hypothetically, Minny could be able to move one or both of them to a team which needs to get to the cap floor during the latter part of their contracts, buuuuuut, of course that would mean that they'd have to waive their NMCs to make that happen. All in all, it was a good deal for Minny and for Parise and Suter, since the players got payed NHL Top 5 all-time contracts while not being that in actual player stature or ability - and Minny will have more star- and fan appeal. Still, Minny is far from being a contender with these moves, since their blueline corps is pretty weak. The young defensemen had a good season last season (much better than expected, especially in the beginning when Minny was doing so well), but their deficiencies were pretty blatant at the end of the season. Also, I'm not convinced by their offensive line-ups, and they really don't have a legitimate 2nd line center, because if they expect Granlund to fill that spot they are stretching it a bit in my opinion. But, since I'm a fan of Minnesota hockey in general - having been a Northstars fan as a little boy (still hate Dallas for stealing the franchise) - I'm glad they signed with Minny instead of a place like Chicago.
Ya, their situation is kind of like the Lions after the 2008 season...no one wanted to end up there. But, you gotta start somewhere. There are those few players who want to be a part of turning said team around (as Matt Stafford did).
