Examining Bruins buyout candidates as offseason begins to ramp up

Lord Stanley’s Cup has yet to be handed out, but an accelerated NHL offseason calendar waits for no one this fall. 

On Friday, the league will arrive at one of its first critical dates of the 2020 offseason, with a two-week buyout window giving teams the ability to free up cap space in an effort to both create fiscal flexibility and account for a flat upper limit of $81.5 million for the 2020-21 season.

The buyout window will last for two weeks, ending on Oct. 8 — the day before the start of free agency. With every GM cognizant of the looming cap crunch on the horizon, expect a frantic flurry of moves in the coming days, with franchises cutting ties with burdensome contracts that would otherwise remain stagnant on the books.

For those who need a refresher on the way buyouts function in the NHL, the fantastic folks over at CapFriendly have an extensive FAQ and breakdown, but we'll touch on a few of the primary points here:

• Teams that opt to buy out a player are still responsible for paying two-thirds of their remaining salary on the contract — unless the player is under 26, in which the team is only responsible for paying one-third of the remaining salary. In terms of a buyout of a player who signed said contract at age 35 or older, there are no cap savings — the only relief comes from the actual salary the team was paying out to the player.


• Signing bonuses are fully guaranteed and will be paid out, even if a player is bought out.


• Buyouts are spread out over twice the remaining term of the contract — for example, a three-year contract that was bought out would be spread over six years.