Zach Parise delays decision; Preds losing patience with Ryan Suter

Day 1 of free agency will end without decisions on the futures of the market's top two names. Both Zach Parise and Ryan Suter received offers and heard pitches from various teams, but will likely choose their destinations on Monday.

Parise and his agent, Wade Arnott, were in Toronto on Sunday and after it was believed teams would be traveling to the Newport Sports offices to make their presentations a la Brad Richards a year ago, interested parties were eventually told to submit their offers over the phone. Reports had Parise looking for a signing bonus of $12 million this year and next year along with term of at least a decade long.

The Pittsburgh Penguins, Minnesota Wild, who were helped by Jack Jablonski, and Detroit Red Wings, believed to be the three front-runners, all made moves on Sunday while awaiting word from the Parise camp.

Joining Parise in the highly-sought after department is Suter, who wasn't expected to make his selection on Sunday. GM David Poile said the Predators put in a "firm" offer for Suter hoping to entice the defenseman to stay and hoped a decision would come soon so he could move on to other targets.

From Josh Cooper of the Tennessean:

"I haven't done that to this point, but I think that's probably the proper thing to do," Poile said. "It's a tough situation we're in. Ryan controls all the cards right now, and if he comes back and signs with us, that's terrific and we live happily ever after, but we need to move this forward because there's a couple of other directions we may want to go if we knew that he wasn't coming back."

After Paul Gaustad's big deal on Saturday, could Nashville compete with the bigger market teams in regards to term and salary, especially with Shea Weber's future coming to a head next summer? Poile said his offer would be competitive with other top teams and that Barry Trotz has been in contact with Weber throughout the day regarding Suter.

Late Sunday afternoon, Sportnet's Nick Kypreos Tweeted that he was hearing Suter was close to signing with the Detroit Red Wings. Suter's agent, Neil Sheehy, told Larry Lage of the AP that was untrue for the moment and no decision had been made. The Red Wings are believed to be the favorites in the Suter sweepstakes at the moment.

Once Suter comes off the board, all of the teams left waiting at the dance will turn their attentions over to Jason Garrison and Matt Carle, both of whom are expected to bring in decent paydays from money not spent.

Follow Sean Leahy on Twitter at @Sean_Leahy