Are Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa the new Zach Parise and Ryan Suter?

When Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed identical 13-year, $98 million contracts with the Wild a little over 11 years ago, the hope was that they would transform the franchise and bring the State of Hockey its first Stanley Cup.

All parties settled instead for a steady string of slightly above-average seasons, culminating in consistent trips to the playoffs, a pair of first-round wins and neither complete satisfaction nor massive disappointment from the Xcel Energy Center masses.

With Parise and Suter's bloated contracts — now in the form of buyouts — choking the Wild's salary cap for the next couple of seasons, it is easy to deride the long-ago dueling deals.

In doing so, though, we forget — as Patrick Reusse pointed out on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast — that Suter and Parise led to a resurgence in fan interest and gave the Wild a credible return on investment as long as they were here.

How they are remembered, though, was distilled perfectly by a recent tweet (can we still call it that, with Elon Musk determined to rebrand Twitter to "X" for some reason?) in response to Star Tribune digital sports editor Howard Sinker:

A follow-up tweet confirms that it was not a comparison based on flattery: "Two leaders that were supposed to carry our local team to the promised land only to selfishly hold the team back."

There's a lot to unpack there, and there are a lot of baseline differences between the duos.

Parise and Suter accomplished far more in a much longer time frame with the Wild, too, than the pairing of Buxton and Correa have had a chance yet to do with the Twins.

But in terms of the symbolism? Yeah, I can see where the comparison comes from (except the selfish part; are players not expected to make money for their talent?).

Suter and Parise signed those contracts, immediately became the Wild's most visible faces and highest-paid players, and the burden of expectations followed.

Correa ($32 million) and Buxton ($15 million) are both signed long-term and are currently the Twins' highest-paid players. Both were excellent (when healthy) in 2022. Both have underachieved in 2023, with the burden of expectations becoming heavier.

But the Twins' duo still has a lot of time to write their story, while the Suter and Parise era is over. How we ultimately define Buxton and Correa's success or failure will be interesting, to say the least.

*Speaking of the Wild, Filip Gustavsson signed a three-year, $11.25 million deal to stay in Minnesota on Monday. If Parise and Suter were paired with the Gus Bus, their story might have played out differently.

*I will be interested to see the final details of Danielle Hunter's contract whenever those are made available this week.

*I wrote about Sean Payton trashing Nathaniel Hackett late last week. Since then, Payton has apologized and Aaron Rodgers has trashed Payton, saying: "I think it was way out of line, inappropriate, and I think he needs to keep my coaches' names out of his mouth."