Wild waive their only native son

On Tuesday, the Wild announced that they were placing right wing Mark Parrish on waivers. If he and his three-year $8.35M salary commitment aren't picked up on Wednesday, he will be bought out. At which point the Kings (or whomever) can get him for much less than the $2.85M he was scheduled to get this season.

I can't pretend to know everything, or really anything about the Wild, but it's a bit sad to see this happen. Parrish is the only native Minnesotan on the team. GM Doug Risebrough said that Parrish was simply a "victim of the salary cap". Based on this story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and the comments, Parrish was a bit of an enigma for Wild fans. He used to be a good player, but wasn't playing up to his potential. There's a common sentiment that he just wasn't "fitting in" and spent a significant amount of time in coach Jacques Lemaire's doghouse. Fans wanted to like him for a number of reasons. One of them was that he is a native son. However, it just wasn't working out.

I looked around the Wild blogosphere for reactions to this. Sadly, I don't have any of these fine bloggers in the blogroll, but that'll change soon.
Kirsten from Land of Lakes and Hockey, is one of Parrish's biggest fans, and is pretty irritated about the matter. She went the extra mile by cursing Risebrough's name (and Lemaire's) in both English and French.

Fellow Wild blogger Hitting the Post chimes in with a little "Don't drink the kool-aid" action:

As neat as it is to have "one of our own" on the squad, perhaps we should apply a little perspective to their on-ice contributions to-date before we yell ourselves hoarse clamoring for DR to sign another one.

Fair enough, but it's just odd to see a guy go from being the Wild's Captain during the 2007 playoffs and one of the alternating Captains this season to the waiver wire.

There's no way any team picks him off waivers. Instead, he'll become a free agent and will likely end up in the City of Angels. By the way, has anybody told the Kings that it's damn near August? When are they gonna sign anyone?

Checking out the Wild's salary commitments for the 08-09 season, they don't have a whole lot of wiggle room, and they don't have a full roster either. If they feel the need to sign a Minnesotan on the cheap, there's two perfectly good, um ...good, er ... serviceable, uh ... available native Minnesotan blueliners who have just left Carolina's fold. If they want Kristy or Snuggles, they're both there for the taking.

Speaking of Snuggles, it's been a full month since we've heard a single word about him and his NHLPA appeal of the Canes buying out his contract. I wonder what's going on there. He's disappeared from the Canes page, and the NHLPA lists him as "unsigned". Has anyone heard anything?