Zach Parise declares himself fully healthy and ready to go

ST. PAUL, MN - APRIL 15: Zach Parise #11 of the Minnesota Wild blocks a shot against the Winnipeg Jets in Game Three of the Western Conference First Round during the 2018 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at the Xcel Energy Center on April 15, 2018 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by Bruce Kluckhohn/NHLI via Getty Images) /

After an injury-hampered 2017-18 campaign, Zach Parise has declared himself 100 percent healthy.

As age and injuries have piled up, Zach Parise is not what he once was as a scorer. He shows flashes, but they are becoming fewer and further between. After the Minnesota Wild’s lone win in a first round playoff series against the Winnipeg Jets, Parise was sidelined by a fractured sternum.

Parise has been skating, and he has been playing in a weekly 4-on-4 league with multiple other NHL players. That points to being 100 percent healthy, and that’s exactly what Parise professed over the weekend to Dane Mizutani of the St. Paul Pioneer Press .

“I don’t anticipate that being a problem,” “It feels good.”

Parise also missed 40 games during the regular season last year, after finally undergoing surgery on his troublesome back in mid-October. He finished with just 24 points (15 goals and nine assists), but 12 of those goals came over a 16-game stretch from March 1-April 2 and 17 of those points came over a 19-game stretch going back a little further to Feb. 23.

In part due to the matching 13-year, $98 million deals Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter got in 2012, the Wild are up against the salary cap and can’t do much in free agency. Their moves to this point in the offseason under new general manager Paul Fenton fit that template, with trades as the most viable path to shake up a mix of players that hasn’t worked.

Elsewhere in the Western Conference, and the Central Division more specifically, teams have improved this offseason or are expected to remain very good. The Wild, on the other hand, are perpetually stuck in neutral, trying to bank on internal improvement that has never really come.

Parise’s scoring run at the end of last regular season was nice to see. But right on cue, however fluky and random the sternum injury in the playoffs was, he was banged up again heading into the offseason. Healthy or not through all of next season, anything Parise offers will come for at best a fringe playoff team once again.

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