After that, Parise was gifted the traditional silver stick from Wild GM Bill Guerin, a $5,000 donation in his name to Children's Minnesota, as well as a vacation and a utility vehicle.
Parise skated in his 1,000th NHL game last week in Dallas, becoming the 347th player in league history to reach the milestone and the eighth to do it in a Wild uniform.
3. Saturday was a day of round numbers.
While the Wild celebrated Parise's 1,000th game (he played in his 1,004th contest), Saturday's game marked the very first in the head coaching tenure of Dean Evason, who was named Minnesota's interim head coach on Friday morning.
The game also marked the 1,500th regular season game in franchise history.
If the Wild was an NHL player, its 1,500 games would rank 22nd on the league's all-time list, behind some impressive names, including Steve Yzerman (1,514), Moorhead's Matt Cullen (1,516), Zdeno Chara (1,542), Ray Bourque (1,612), Chris Chelios (1,651) and Mark Messier (1,756), among many others.
Ironically, the Wild's 1,500 games wasn't even the most on the ice on Saturday. Heck, it wasn't even the second-most. San Jose's Patrick Marleau skated in his 1,711th game (fifth all-time) and Joe Thornton played his 1,624th (10th).
The NHL's all-time leader in games played is the legendary Gordie Howe, who skated in 1,767 contests in five different decades, the only player to ever do that (40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s).