Craig Leipold had been approved as the new majority owner of the Wild in April 2008. The NHL's free-agent period opened a couple of months later, and it became clear the Wild was ready to end what had been a largely conservative stance when it came to spending.
Marian Hossa was near the top of that free-agent class. The Wild wanted him for a couple of reasons: A) to upgrade its play up front substantially; and B) to increase the chances that Marian Gaborik, Hossa's pal from Slovakia, would re-sign with the team rather than leave as a free agent in the summer of 2009. (He left.)
The Wild offered Hossa an eight-year contract for $8 million per year. The 29-year-old lost in the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals with Pittsburgh. He wanted the best chance to win and signed a one-year deal with Detroit for $7.45 million.
"The Wild made him a very significant offer,'' Hossa's agent Ritch Winter told the Star Tribune's Michael Russo. "It's not really an insult to anybody. Marian had a good long talk with Doug [Risebrough], but this was a chance to play for one of the greatest teams ever assembled.''
The Red Wings lost to Pittsburgh in the 2009 Finals. This gave commentators around the NHL a chance to ridicule Hossa, since he had left the Penguins in his search for a Stanley Cup.
Hossa was a free agent again in the summer of 2009. He went through his options once more, with more of an eye toward winning the NHL's big prize than total dollars.
He didn't go back to Detroit; rather, Hossa signed a 12-year contract with Chicago worth $62.8 million. That's an average of $5.23 million … almost chump change in today's NHL for a player of Hossa's standing.
"We all thought the Blackhawks had a great group of young players, but the sure sign of that was when Hossa decided to sign with us,'' Tim Hickey of Frankfort, Ill., said Tuesday night. "He took less money than he could've gotten elsewhere — by quite a bit — because he thought Chicago was the place to win a Cup.''
