Will the Penguins Buy Out Granlund This Time Around?
With player movement around the NHL slowing to a trickle, I confess my mind has taken a bit of a summer sabbatical, with nary a fresh idea popping into my head. So when one trickled in this morning I figured I’d better jump on it.
Gifted with a second buyout window thanks to Drew O’Connor’s arbitration case, will Kyle Dubas reverse his earlier course regarding Mikael Granlund?
Buying out the last two seasons of the much-maligned forward’s contract would provide quite a bit of cap savings against his $5 million AAV over the next couple of seasons. To be exact, $4.167 million this season and $3.167 million the next. Hardly chicken feed and dollars that could be used to fill other voids and/or provide some cap flexibility.
The pain would come down the road, in 2025-26 and ’26-27, resulting in a cap hit of $1.833 million in each of those seasons. However, with the cap ceiling expected to rise by as much as $5 million beginning in ’24-25, a relatively small price to pay.
Dubas is on record as saying he doesn’t favor buyouts to correct past mistakes.