EDMONTON, ALBERTA – Zach Parise and Ryan Suter were back in uniform Thursday night against the Edmonton Oilers, trading USA Hockey's sweater for the Wild's jersey again after two weeks together in Russia.
Parise and Suter, who came to the Wild as a free-agent tag team two summers ago, roomed together for the first time at the Sochi Olympics. Parise took the living room, Suter the bedroom, and Parise quickly discovered the difference between him and the Wild's 30-minute-a-night defenseman.
"He's neat. I'm not," Parise said. "My room was a complete mess compared to his room. His stuff was all folded and neat and put away in the closet. Mine was kind of a disaster."
Suter explained to Parise that his tidiness was ingrained in him during one year at Culver Military Academy in Indiana as a teenager.
"He said he had to do that at Culver every day, have everything folded and nice and put away," said Parise, before adding with a huge laugh, "I guess at Shattuck we weren't up to those standards."
Parise and Suter had a fun time in Sochi. The weather was 60 degrees almost daily, and the Americans bought bicycles to get around.
"The meals were a 15-minute walk, the Olympic Village, no buses were allowed in there. Like the USA House was literally a 45-minute walk," Parise said. "So the whole team just bought bikes and rode them everywhere, even to the games. It was awesome."
As fun as the experience was, the Americans came home empty-handed after being shut out by eventual gold medal-winning Canada in the semifinals and Finland in the bronze medal game.
