The roots of Ryan Suter’s one-year contract with the St. Louis Blues go back three years.

In 2021, immediately after the Minnesota Wild bought out the final four years of Suter’s 13-year, $98 million contract, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong got in touch with Neil Sheehy, Suter’s representative from I-C-E Hockey Agency.

“Doug was the first to call,” Sheehy told The Athletic on Thursday.

The Blues and Suter couldn’t come to a contract agreement at the time, with the defenseman, then 36, seeking a four-year deal and the Blues only willing to go three. He eventually got four years and $14.6 million ($3.65 million annual average value) from the Dallas Stars. But as it turned out, after three years, the Stars were ready to move on. In late June, they bought out Suter for the second time in his 19-year NHL career.

Suter took a couple of days after that to decide with his family — wife Becky and children Brooks, Avery, Easton and Beau — if the now 39-year-old free agent would continue playing.

“Talking to Ryan, it was first and foremost he wanted to keep playing, but he had to talk to his family about whether they were on board with it,” Sheehy said. “He had full support from them.”

So for the second time in three years, Sheehy and Armstrong were on the phone…

ST. PAUL, Minn. — For years, Luke Kunin watched as his girlfriend, then fiancée, then wife, Sophia, supported his career.

She was a shoulder to lean on when things got tough in Minnesota. Moved to Nashville when he was traded there. Was a constant during the toughest season of his pro career — last year with the San Jose Sharks, when he tore his ACL.

So Kunin can’t wait to walk into Xcel Energy Center — the arena where he began his NHL career as a Minnesota Wild rookie seven years ago — on Saturday with the shoe on the other foot. The 1 p.m. CDT game will be his first time watching Sophia play at the highest level in person, as she’ll take the ice with Minnesota’s Professional Women’s Hockey League team to face Boston in its regular-season finale ahead of next month’s playoffs.

“I’ll get to see what it’s all about,” Luke said. “I’ve watched her games on the internet all year — as much as I can with our schedule — but I think of all the things she’s sacrificed for me over the years so I can live out my dream. I can’t wait to be there to support her and watch her live her dream.”

Luke and Sophia Kunin’s relationship has helped them come through so much to arrive at this point. Meeting as teenagers. Watching each other excel in hockey….

Thirty years before Chris Zimmerman would become CEO of the St. Louis Blues’ business department, he was establishing a career in advertising in Ridgefield, Conn. He and his wife, Emily, had built a house from the ground up, in which they were planning to raise their then-3-year-old daughter, Katie, and newborn son, Ted.

“We literally could imagine our kids going to Ridgefield High,” Zimmerman remembers. “But they didn’t even get to preschool there.”

In February 1995, Zimmerman was offered a job with Nike in Portland, Ore., and the family changed coasts and started a journey in sports that’s last ever since.

There would be more stops along the way: Exeter, N.H., where Zimmerman worked for Bauer; Vancouver, with the Canucks; briefly back to New Hampshire; then Los Angeles with Easton Sports.

It was one thing for Zimmerman to relocate.

“Your focus, your connections, your daily life is defined,” he says.

But for spouses and family, it’s incredibly hard.

“You moved and it was like, ‘OK, we’re staying in a Residence Inn for six months,’” Katie, now 32, recalls.

After doing the drill five times, Zimmerman concluded that to get truly integrated into a new community, it takes at least three years.

Mom, though, always made the transition smoother.

“She was so great…

Paul Stastny knew people were going to figure it out eventually.

But he didn’t see the point in making a big deal of it.

And so when I reached out this week to see how he was doing, curious whether he was talking to teams about one last run, I got a completely different answer.

“I haven’t filed anything, but in early September we decided we were done,” Stastny said.

After putting up 822 points in 1,145 career regular-season games over 17 NHL seasons, the 37-year-old forward has called it quits.

Without much fanfare.

“I didn’t put anything out on social media or anything,” Stastny said with a chuckle. “I kind of came into the league quietly and I’m leaving the league quietly. That’s the way I like it.

“All the people close to me know, and then word always gets out eventually.”

Well, we all know now.

Stastny said he had some calls from teams this summer but wanted to wait and see how he felt.

“I wanted to take all the emotions out of it,” he said. “The summer got further along, and I got on the ice a few times … I wouldn’t say the spark wasn’t there — I still love the game — but I think I was just ready to move forward to the next chapter.

“When you know, you know.”

Stastny and his wife and two kids, aged 8 and 6, are currently at their home in…

If you have questions about the future of your team’s live games on your local cable, satellite or digital provider, particularly those on Bally Sports channels, we’re here to answer with what we know so far.

Diamond Sports Group, the Baltimore-based corporate parent of the 19 Bally Sports channels that air 47 NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA teams, announced Feb. 15 that it would skip a $140 million debt payment due that day and use the month-long grace period as part of its effort to financially reorganize itself.

Many observers interpret the move as a precursor to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, though that is not a certainty. Diamond has $8 billion-plus of debt, incurred as part of parent Sinclair’s 2019 purchase of the regional sports channels, and lost $1.2 billion in the most recent fiscal quarter.

“Certainly more likely that they will file bankruptcy because they did not make the payment,” said Schuyler Carroll, a bankruptcy attorney who is not connected to Diamond. “But not necessarily that they will file bankruptcy. They are still continuing discussions with their creditors to try and avoid bankruptcy. But those can often be difficult.”

Diamond in a Feb. 15 statement said it “intends to use the 30-day grace period to continue progressing its ongoing…