Oilers are not in a position to buyout Neal next year because you can't look at his buyout in isolation. Sure it is 1.9 and change. Then you have to add 750k from what they are retaining from the Lucic trade, plus the almost 4M from other buyouts. Pretty much 6.5M, which is a lot for a single season and for a team that should be competing now. They would have Lucic for another 3 years, Neal for 6, Sekera for 3 years, and still one more year of Pouliot.
Effectively it would handicap them for the majority of McDavid's prime years.
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