It's only pointless if you look at it as savings.
Lucic's contract has the savings built in as the bonuses have been paid.
If you're managing a hockey team and you are worried about cap space impacts of just getting the player off your roster it's much closer.
If both teams bought out their players after one more failed season the Oilers would have a cap hit of $1.9M for six years, but also take on the Lucic buy out from Calgary for their percentage of $2M total over six years. Results in a total cap hit of $13.6M over six years or $2.3 per season.
In Calgary it's up and down, but the total cap hit to buy out Neal after one year comes in at $14.4M three rough years, and then three almost irrelevant years. The average cap hit for Calgary is $2.4M per year, just over 100k more for year than the Neal buy out.
I agree you don't do it for savings, but if you want to get rid of the player (which clearly both teams have already wanted to do once) the overall impact between both buyouts is negligible.
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