As James just put it: “Wild put two hotels on Park Place.”

Or as I think: total and utter lunacy.

The Wild now have about $35MM, or 50% of their cap space, tied up in five players: Parise, Heatley, Koivu, Suter and Backstrom. That’s a lot of elite money for only sorta elite players. (And in the case of Heatley a 20-goal scorer.) The fact remains that all of that talent still doesn’t have a premier playmaker to dish them the puck, a liquid weak defence, terrible injury problems, and they can’t score. They stunk last year. I don’t know if Parise and Suter are enough to cure what ails ’em.

Also can’t help but wonder who the hell these owners think they are. $12MM in bonus money EACH in case there’s a CBA rollback? How can that investment ever come back in jerseys and ticket sales?

I get that both players wanted to be close to family, but it’s hard to understand how they both turned down bonafide contenders like Pittsburg, Detroit, or even Chicago. It will be something special if they build a winner in their home state. But Minnie has nowhere to go now if it doesn’t work out. They’re spending more than every team in the league except Boston, and they were seventh last in the league last season. I can’t wait to see that Forbes ‘value to salary ratio’ thing they do every year.

Final thought: good lord, how much is Weber going to get next year?