Zach Parise Has Signed with the Wild, and Now you can Rest Assured that Penguins Fans will Feel Betrayed!

Another offseason, another free-agent winger has snubbed the Pittsburgh Penguins. Or at least that's how the Penguins fans will probably spin it.

It has been reported that Zach Parise, the much sought after free agent forward, has agreed to a 13 year, $98 million deal with the Minnesota Wild.

Just like in past years, the Penguins and their fans had high hopes of landing a top winger for Sidney Crosby. In this case, the high hopes were based on the friendship between Crosby and Parise.

Well, as I blogged about the other day, the NHL is a business, and about 99% of the time, professional athletes are going to sign for the top dollar. And that's exactly what Parise did.

If my math is correct, the deal will average a little over $7.5 million a season. With the Penguins just inking Crosby to a 12 year, $104.4 million deal, and with Evgeni Malkin up for free agency in a couple of years, there was just no way the Penguins were going to be able to land a top free agent unless he was willing to take a discount.

Speaking of almost impossibilities. There is just no way Penguins fans WILL NOT feel totally offended and betrayed by this deal.

Pens fans are naturally a defensive group, and with a recent history of free agent wingers choosing to sign with other teams, this will put them even more on the defensive.

In 2008, the Penguins acquired talented winger, and soon to be free agent, Marian Hossa at the trade deadline, and he was one of the key contributors to the team's Stanley Cup run. In fact, it was Hossa who came within a heartbeat of scoring the tying goal in Game six of the finals against Detroit at the old Mellon Arena.

In the ensuing free agency period, many Pens fans just naturally assumed that the few months that Hossa spent in Pittsburgh would be enough to make him totally loyal to the franchise. This famously wasn't true, of course. Hossa, instead, signed a one year deal with the same Detroit team that eliminated the Pens in the finals.

This REALLY didn't sit well with Penguins fans. You would have thought that Crosby left for another team, and not a guy who was only a hired gun.

And fans still haven't forgiven Hossa for this, even though they couldn't have gotten any sweeter revenge than they did a year later when the Penguins defeated Hossa and the Wings in a rematch of the Stanley Cup finals. In fact, just last year, I was at a local Pittsburgh mall, and I saw a piece of memorabilia that referred to Hossa as "Mary Ann Hossa."

Talk about holding a grudge.

Last summer, Jaromir Jagr, a talented winger famous for his spurning ways, spurned the Pens by, sort of, leading his former team into thinking that he would return to finish out his career here. Instead, he signed with the hated Philadelphia Flyers and, more than likely, permanently cemented his legacy as a Pittsburgh sports villain.

The perceived Parise snubbing might be especially hard for Pens fans to take after Crosby gave the team a hometown discount by not going for a raise during his recent contract extension. The belief was that Sid did this in-order to give the Penguins flexibility in the free agent market. Also, just two weeks ago, Pittsburgh traded third-line center Jordan Staal to the Carolina Hurricanes.

But wait, there's more!

In addition to Parise, the Wild also signed the other top free agent and Pens target, defenseman Ryan Suter, to the same 13 year, $98 million deal.

So not only didn't the Penguins get either of the top free agents, they lost another talented player in a trade.

It hasn't been the best offseason for the Penguins.

Much like a bride left at the altar one too many times, this latest perceived snubbing by a free agent forward could really send Pens fans over the edge. It doesn't matter that Parise had ties to Minnesota beings that he lived there as a kid, or that he had ties with the Devils because, you know, he was their captain and helped lead them to the Stanley Cup finals, the only thing the Pens fans will focus on is his friendship with Crosby. That tie should have been enough to sway him to come to Pittsburgh.

I'm sure the fans will express their displeasure with Parise by displaying signs at the Consol Energy Center in the upcoming season(s). I don't know exactly what these signs will have written on them, but here are a couple of ideas to get the ball rolling:

"Zach Pariah!"

"Hey, Sid, with friends like that, who needs enemies?"

Maybe the Penguins should just stay the heck away from free agent wingers.