Should New Jersey Devils Consider Zach Parise And Ryan Suter?

After the New Jersey Devils magical Stanley Cup run fell short, former captain Zach Parise broke fans’ hearts by going home to Minnesota along with friend and star defender Ryan Suter. The plan like most was to make money and win big at home. While they did make money with their matching $7.5 million dollar contracts for what was supposed to be 13 years, the team never built much around them. Now they are both early free agents thanks to a buyout and looking for a fresh start. Both could go anywhere but since they signed together once it is always an interesting thought that both could do so again so that is what we will be looking at today.

Suter has played some tough minutes for the Wild. Even at 36 years old, he has managed to handle it well. He was a negative position player last season but positive in relation to his mediocre team while averaging over 22 minutes a night. He is a bigger body who plays a heavy game for his age. With the minutes played he could easily handle an above-average workload in New Jersey. Suter also racked up 19 points in 56 games last year which is respectable for being good in the defensive end but something that may be overlooked is the previous few seasons. While old players do slow down it is not a guarantee he did in a huge way yet. In the 19/20 season, he got an astonishing 48 points in 69games building off previous years’ 47 and 51 point seasons. He also is a guy who does not miss much time playing 70+times in every non-shortened season of his career and his longest time off in a year was 12 games a decade ago.

Parise is a bit of a different story and with his past in the city may be a harder sell to fans and perhaps even the player. He had 18 points in 45 games and faced some criticism from wild fans but was it all bad? The previous two seasons he was a 25+goal scorer and with 46 and 61 points if he was not making 7.5million dollars people probably would have been happy with that production. Parise was a fantastic two-way player for the Devils and Wild, he brought leadership and tenacity so can he do it for another year or two?

While neither is a long-term solution Parise looks to have a little left in the tank and Suter a fair bit more. They would add leadership and fill roles with a known commodity instead of a young question mark, which has kept the Devils in the basement for a while now. Both should come cheap and if given a 1-2 year deal for 2 million could be a very valuable piece. With the loss of Nathan Bastian, the Devils could use a Coleman or Parise who plays defense and can score to fill that spot or someone to build an actual NHL 3rd line around. With Suter, he slots into the top 4 with Severson, Smith, and Graves which looks rather respectable. This would also give Siegenthaler and Subban a shot to shine with some easier minutes and give the youth another year to develop without pressure or worse, a premature callup that they can not handle.

In the end, this is something that did not catch my eye as a good idea right away but the more time goes on and if no big moves are made in free agency it is a solid short-term solution with no real risk.