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.

Continue reading Will the Penguins Buy Out Granlund This Time Around? at Pittsburgh Penguins - PenguinPoop Blog.