Ryan Suter Bought Out with Ruthless Efficiency
I’m in California for a couple weeks, but sometimes you just have to wake up early during vacation and write about how wrong you were. Today is such a day.
The Dallas Stars are buying out the remainder of Ryan Suter's contract.
With one year remaining on Suter's deal this move will add $1.4 million on the Stars cap for the next two seasons.
The Stars will save $1.4 million with the buyout.— Jeff Marek (@JeffMarek) June 27, 2024
Every time the question about buying out Ryan Suter has come up lately, I think back to Jim Nill’s terse exchange with Saad Yousuf last summer at the draft:
For weeks, I broadly asked Jim Nill about a Ryan Suter buyout. On Thursday, I asked directly.
"I’m baffled by you guys’ comments. Actually, disappointed. I think the level of hate you guys have shown… Don’t quit your day job.”
On not buying out Suterhttps://t.co/RLsFuGySSv— Saad Yousuf (@SaadYousuf126) June 30, 2023
I’ve been pretty convinced that the Stars were going to ride out the last year of Suter’s deal, given how strongly Nill rebuffed this question last year, and given how few defensemen they have of NHL quality signed for next year right now. So the question today is, what changed? Why did the Stars go from vociferously denying that they wanted to be rid of Suter after a horrible playoff gaffe in 2023 to a cold-blooded move like buying him out when they have a dearth of options waiting behind him?
Here are a few things I’ve concluded as I eat some crow this morning:
The Stars now have just two defensemen signed for next year (Lindell and Heiskanen) with Harley and Lundkvist being RFAs who can also return at Dallas’s behest. With Lindell, Heiskanen and Harley as obvious left-handed candidates to play top-four minutes, that meant Ryan Suter was a third-pairing defensemen, with Lian Bicshel champing at the bit to play.
My mistake in assuming the Stars wouldn’t do this was based pretty heavily on the timing of it, as free agency isn’t for another few days, whereas today was the last chance for a Suter buyout. So, I don’t think this Suter move happens if the Stars aren’t very confident they’ll have comparable or superior alternatives to Suter on the left side of the blue line. Jim Nill tends to know what’s gonna happen before most other general managers in this league, so I think our can have some confidence that Nill has a very specific plan for how he’s going to use that extra $2.9 million in cap space this year the Suter buyout gives him.
For one thing, I think Bichsel will now have a legitimate chance to win a spot in camp now, which wasn’t really the case before this move. I don’t think the Stars will go into camp without a veteran who could feasibly play in that 3rd LHD spot if Bichsel isn’t ready (or if he struggles in the NHL), but this does mean Bichsel could win a spot, so it’ll be all up to him now, I’d guess.
Last week, Jim Nill mentioned to Lia Assimakopoulos that the cap numbers just weren’t coming out all that rosy for Dallas (I’m paraphrasing a bit). Nill is always great about playing his card close to his vest, but in looking at the roster last week, I came to a similar conclusion (from a position of far greater ignorance, of course). The Stars just can’t bring back Tanev, re-sign players like Steel and Harley and Wedgewood, and also add even marginal forward help like Carrier and Duchene (or Duchene’s replacement) without a few extra million in space. This move, combined with sending Ty Dellandrea to San Jose, gives them enough space to do all of that.
Ryan Suter never made a ton of friends in Minnesota, but I think it’s safe to say the Stars would have found a way to keep him if he’d been likely to bring $3.65 million in value to the team. You don’t have to be Mr. Personality to win a job in the NHL, but it might help you to keep it when your performance starts to dip. The fact is, Suter is nearing 40, and he plays a position where the Stars have better and/or cheaper alternatives. Given his refusal to entertain playing on his off-side and his decreasing abilities as a player, it’s hard to point to a reason the Stars would have been eager to keep him around. The team has plenty of veteran leaders even without Joe Pavelski, and Suter has never exactly been a player in Dallas who earned the love and respect of everyone around him. Reading between the lines, I am comfortable guessing that he was not thrilled about playing next to Nils Lundkvist, and that he was not likely to earn himself an alternate captaincy any time soon. Put bluntly, the same things that led to his teammates and organization in Minnesota wanting him gone didn’t seem to magically disappear in Dallas. I think it’s more likely that the team culture was just more resilient in Dallas, and that meant that Suter’s curdmudgeonly reputation was less of an issue. But it also wasn’t much of an asset.
You’ve probably seen rumors about Chris Tanev wanting four years of contract security. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that Tanev is the sort of piece Dallas has to get. If it’s not Tanev, the offseason starts to look grim pretty quick, putting Jim Nill in a position of great need with his back against the wall when it comes to the trade market. But if the Stars somehow do miss out on Tanev, they now have some room to make other moves work, even so. As Jim Nill showed today, he’s not going to hesitate to keep the Stars’ momentum rolling.
One of the wisest people I ever met wrote a book in which he talked about how important it is to teach children how to be good people. Not only because it is good for them intrinsically (though that is paramount), but because it also will help them in very practical ways. Bosses tend to promote employees that get along with people, for instance. Being decent has very basic value in a social and commercial context, so the more we can help our children to become the sort of people that leave a Joe Pavelski-like impression on those around us, the more successful they are likely to be, regardless of how well they do at sports, or even in school. I don’t pretend to know Suter personally, and I’m not here to demonize him as a person. But for someone who’s played as long as he has, the lack of effusive praise for his treatment of others seems noteworthy. I’m sure we’ve all heard some unpleasant stories, and I’ve heard a few I can’t put here, but man, being a good person is just always more important that being good at a sport, you know? Virtue travels.
When the Stars signed Suter, I wondered if he would become the first player to be bought out twice with two different teams taking cap penalties to do so. He narrowly avoided that, as Tony DeAngelo beat him to the punch. I don’t think those two players being on that ignominious list is entirely coincidental. Anyway, Suter has millions and millions of dollars and will get a few more over the next two years, so I guess good for him. Hopefully he uses that money to help people.
Speaking of being good at sports, here are two lesser-known moments from Suter’s time in Dallas that stick with me to this day. Have a nice day.
