As expected because of the three years left on his contract worth $8.35 million, Mark Parrish has cleared waivers. The Wild will immediately proceed with buying him out, and thus he’ll immediately become a free agent, sources say.

I’m sure teams will have interest, but waivers weren’t appealing when you know you could get him cheaper and probably for less term on a free-agent contract rather than inheriting his current contract.

As reported in today’s Strib, the Wild will buy Parrish out for two-thirds, or $5,566,667. As for that cap hit, the team can spread the cap hit over six years to lessen the pain. Instead of a $2.65 million cap hit in each of the next three years, it’ll have a $727,778 cap hit in Years 1 and 2 and a $927,778 cap hit in Years 3-6.

For this year, the Wild saves $1,922,222 against the cap, and now has a cap scaled back to $52,649,277.

I’m looking at Paragraph 13 of the standard player contract right now, Parrish will get his money over six years. However, according to Exhibit 21 of the collective bargaining agreement, it also reads to me that Parrish can “assign the club’s payout obligation to a third party in order to enable him to receive a lump sum payout.”

I’d take the lump sum

I forgot to mention, when I talked to Parrish last night, he told me his agent, John Vollan, spent the day calling teams to gauge their interest in him. So at the very least, Vollan probably got a head start on working out a free-agent deal. I mentioned a bunch of possible teams in last night’s blog. Forgot to mention Nashville as a possibility.

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