Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
But a buyout typically saves real money, in exchange for long term cap implications. Not sure what you mean by immediate cost in this case. The only reason against a Neal buyout is the dead cap money, right? Which is an awfully big reason.
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No, it's dead real money, too.
A Neal BO would have cost $15.3M and given an 8 year cap it of 1.915. So that's $15.3M for 15.3M against your cap (at a somewhat palateable 1.9M over 8 years). But you still need to fill a roster spot, so the cap impact is really 2.6 for those first 4 years where the player would otherwise be on your roster. $18M total cap impact/8years.
Lucic was owed $19M total salary for the 4 years. The Oilers will pay $3M of that. So that Flames are on the hook for a similar $16M as a Neal buyout.
As it's played out, Lucic's probably been at least a 3M+ player these last 2 years, and should be a 2M+ for the last 2 years, so in the grand scheme Flames are overpaying by ~$6M cash, and around 2.75, 2.75, 3.75, 3.75 in 'dead' cap space (~13M cap impact over 4 years). And a 3rd round pick. And our rival has 750k dead cap.
The trade has turned out better from both a cash and cap perspective. Admittedly, I didn't like the trade at the time, albeit for several other reasons, and I'll gladly eat crow that it has worked out in our favour.