NHL Free Agency: Wild Face Tough Task Trying To Lure Zach Parise Or Ryan Suter To Minnesota

The Minnesota Wild certainly have the dollars going into free agency that they will need to land some big names. The question is, will any of the big names want to take that money to play for the Wild?

Zach Parise and Ryan Suter are the two big names this season in NHL free agency and the Wild would love to add both of them to their squad. The problem is, there's plenty of other teams in the league that also want them to join up, and there are some high quality team names on that list. Detroit and Pittsburgh are just two of the teams looking for big names to join them in FA, and the Penguins especially proved they were ready to make some noise this off season when they traded Jordan Staal to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Parise is from Minnesota, as is Suter's wife. That's probably not going to be an incredibly persuasive argument, even paired with millions of dollars. They'll need something a bit better.

GM Chuck Fletcher of the Wild, according to the Star Tribune, has got a few strategies in mind in order to try and lure one or two big names to Minnesota. He's got the money, and he also thinks that the team has got the young guns to show improvement is right around the corner:

"This is a start of a new era," Fletcher said. "The fact they're turning pro is significant. It's not just down the road anymore. We can actually see the road now. What's exciting for me is when you look at it now, just from a prospect standpoint, you look at the forwards we have, the goaltenders we have, the defensemen we have, it's a well-rounded prospect pool.

"Our best days are ahead of us. We all want to get there tomorrow. But if we have a little bit of patience here, we're all going to be rewarded in a big way."

Come July 1, we'll all find out if the Wild's sales pitch to the big names will be able to get the job done. If they do end up landing even one of the two, it will be a bit of a shock to the hockey world. There are teams with more money, more cap space and more success over their histories than the Wild but Fletcher hopes his pitch of future success will do enough.

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