New York Rangers: A Henrik Lundqvist buyout scenario
By Steve Paulus
The Orpik option
What if the Rangers could get someone else to take on the King’s salary and buy him out. It’s not such an outlandish proposal. It happened with Brooks Orpik in June 2018.
Washington Capitals defenseman Brooks Orpik had one year left on his contract at an Average Annual Value (AAV) of $5.5 million. On June 22 he was traded to the Colorado Avalanche along with goalie Philip Grubauer for Colorado’s second round pick in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft.
On June 23, the Avalanche placed Orpik on waivers as required by the CBA and when he cleared waivers, they bought him out on June 24. For the Avalanche, it meant a buyout cap hit of $2.5 million in 2018-19 and $1.5 million in 2019-20.
The key to the deal for Colorado was Grubauer, who they wanted as their starting goalie and they felt that a second round pick was a cheap price to pay and were willing to take Orpik off the Caps’ hands to get the deal done.
What raised eyebrows around the league was when the Washington Capitals then went out and signed Brooks Orpik s an Unrestricted Free Agent for the bargain salary of $1 million. Many thought the Caps had circumvented the rules as teams are not allowed to sign players that they have bought out. The NHL investigated, but because they had traded Orpik, the signing was completely legit.
The Scott Darling buyout
One year later, the Hurricanes and Florida did pretty much the same thing but for different reasons. On June 30, 2019 Carolina traded goalie Scott Darling and a sixth round draft pick to the Panthers for goalie James Reimer.
The Hurricanes wanted to get out from under Darling’s four year $16.6 million contract that had two more years to run. They wanted a goalie to replace him and targeted James Reimer.
Florida immediately placed Darling on waivers and bought him out one day later. Florida was looking to clear cap space and needed to be rid of Reimer’s $3.4 million cap hit as they made room to sign Sergei Bobrovsky. They were willing to eat Darling’s buyout hit of $1.18 million per year for the next four years.
Unlike Orpik, Darling found no takers as a UFA and ended up playing this season in Austria.