Normally, father-son road trips are a great time for NHL players to bond with their dads. With Bob Suter’s passing and J.P. Parise’ health fading, it could be a difficult time for Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.
“It’s going to be hard,” Suter said. “It was something he had looked forward to. We had talked about it. We went to Florida in the middle of August on vacation, and we talked a lot about this trip.”
Suter, 29, deserves a lot of credit for rejecting head coach Mike Yeo’s offer to cancel the trip in respect for what the two prominent Wild players are going through.
Then again, when you consider the memory he shared about his father’s fish-out-of-water presence during a previous trip, it’s easy to see why he wants his teammates to enjoy similar experiences.
“We would have so many stories in the summertime after these trips,” Suter said, laughing. “My dad would wear his work boots to the team meals and everyone was just like, ‘Who is this guy?’ He would drink his soup out of the bowl to finish it and everybody would just be staring.
“He just did these funny little things that a guy from east-side Madison would do. He wasn’t used to the nice hotels and things like that.”
That’s tremendous.
Parise, 30, admitted that it will be sad to be without his dad, but he’ll spend that time with Ryan Suter. The bond the two share is a big reason why they both signed in Minnesota in the first place, so it sounds like it will help them get through what could be a bittersweet road trip.
For more, check out the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s great piece on the sad situation.