This year is weird. That isn’t news. What is news is the Ottawa Senators buying out their Masterton winner so they can save some money while still taking a couple million dollars worth of cap hit. That leaves them with three NHL forward contracts on the books and an owner still looking to cut corners. At the opposite end of the spectrum – and country – many fans expect Vancouver Canucks buyouts to happen. They have big-name free agents they’re trying to sign, and also have to improve the team. Gotta free up money somehow, and there are a lot of contracts that could use cutting. So are buyouts a valid option for them?
Buyout and Tryouts
The compressed season has led to a compressed off-season which leads to… well, we don’t quite know yet. Buyouts are available to teams while the playoffs are still going, and this season? With a flat cap for at least two years? And no (official) “negotiation week” available for free agents? It’s gonna be interesting. But to say there are complications isn’t just driving with blinders on, it’s blacking out your windshield.
Primarily, a buyout is to get money currently on the books reduced. It doesn’t take the money away completely but does reduce it in return for a penalty later. Teams still need to man their rosters, though, so the savings are reduced by an incoming salary. The league minimum is $700,000 this year, so saving a million dollars is only actually saving $300K at best. The question becomes “is this veteran $300,000 better than an AHL-tweener?” And they probably are – for now.
Which is another reason to buy a veteran out: needing room for a prospect. The aforementioned Senators are almost certainly starting next season with several rookies next year, especially among the forwards. They hardly needed to open space on the team for Alex Formenton, Drake Batherson, and Logan Brown. But it’s a clear example of cap space can be used: all three salaries will fit into the cap hit saved in Bobby Ryan‘s buyout.
Ca-noobs
So if Vancouver is looking at buying out, do they have someone waiting to take their place? They have very highly rated prospects, after all. Check out our opinions at the start of the 2019-20 season, for instance. The answer is “kind of”. It’s also a matter of timing, and how much an improving team wants to trust untested players. They just made the playoffs for the first time in five years, and it was close. Taking a step back now risks missing the playoffs entirely next season. So, yes, there are prospects who could get a shot with the team next year. But are they going to be as good this year as the veterans who are in place now?
Saving money by not signing Chris Tanev lets Brogan Rafferty in, but Rafferty is a wildly different player. Will his weaker defence cost the Canucks a playoff spot, or will the money saved on him help the team improve elsewhere enough to compensate? That holistic balancing act goes all the way through the lineup. Arguably the biggest weakness in cap management has been redundant contracts at forward. Both Jay Beagle and Brandon Sutter are defensive centres. Tanner Pearson now has Sven Baertschi‘s middle-six left-wing job. Micheal Ferland and Antoine Roussel bring physicality and speed with a modicum of skill. Surely one or more of these forwards could leave in a buyout, letting a cheap rookie take their place.
It’s not about young players coming up for 2020-21, though. It’s the ones who are already here.
The Countdown is On
There are worse problems to have than trying to fit Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes into your team’s salary structure. Not having them at all, for instance. But both of them are coming due after next year, and you’d better believe they’re getting raises. What those second contracts look like is almost irrelevant right now, because all anyone needs to know is that they are going to be BIG. And here’s where using buyouts now to keep free agents like Tyler Toffoli will hurt later. Even if the Vancouver Canucks buyouts are for players with just one year left on their deals – Sutter and Baertschi, for instance – the payouts will continue the year after. Those two alone would put an extra $2 million in dead money on the cap.
Add whatever deals arise this year for Toffoli or Tanev or Jacob Markstrom or whoever is brought in to replace them to that. And expect at least one moderately expensive veteran if all three are gone. The salary cap isn’t going to move next year, and possibly the one after that. Adding to the cap crunch isn’t going to help. Almost anything else will help more than buying any of those players out. Trading them with salary retention gets them off the books entirely, as does sending them down to the minors. Hanging on to them for just one more year, even at the risk of losing one or two of the big-ticket free agents, is a better option two years from now.
But What About…
Look, we know. But nobody’s buying inflated contracts right now – they’re selling cap space. That’s the commodity in demand. How much do you think they should pay for the opportunity to lose players? Vancouver Canucks buyouts this year will do very little to get their most important young players signed. It’s going to be a big challenge to open cap space, and trades are an option, but the cost is high, too. It may come down to a straightforward choice:
- Losing Toffoli and/or Markstrom and/or Tanev this year and getting Hughes’ and Pettersson’s names on long-term deals in a year.
- Keeping one, two, or all three of them and shipping out more assets next off-season.
Neither one is great, but both involve the important part of keeping the stars. Hopefully, there will be enough team around them for the Canucks to take advantage.
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