Vancouver Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin did not want to resort to using a buyout this offseason to resolve the team's salary cap issues.
"I just think that this group is touching the surface of becoming a good team," said Allvin in April. "So, I don't want to use buyouts if we don't have to. I don't want to use buyouts that are going to affect us in a couple of years when this group is actually, hopefully taking off."
Evidently, Allvin was left with no choice.
According to a report from Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman, the Canucks will buy out the remainder of Oliver Ekman-Larsson's contract.
The buyout evidently caught Ekman-Larsson off-guard. According to his agent, Kevin Epp, Ekman-Larsson came out of his end-of-season meetings not expecting a buyout.
That suggests that the Canucks believed they could clear cap space via other methods but were unable to do so.
The decision has far-ranging consequences.
In the short term, buying out Ekman-Larsson's contract clears nearly all of his $7.85 million cap hit for the 2023-24 season. The cap hit of his buyout for next season will be just $146,667. With the salary cap likely only going up by about $1 million, clearing that much cap space makes a huge difference.
There's also the short-term consequence of needing another defenceman to play on the left side. Travis Dermott's health is still up in the air after missing nearly a full season with a concussion, Jack Rathbone has yet to prove himself at the NHL level, Christian Wolanin is best suited for a more sheltered third-pairing role, and Akito Hirose needs seasoning in the AHL.
Those are the short-term considerations but the bigger ramifications for buying out Ekman-Larsson are the long-term ones. After the 2023-24 season, the cap hit of Ekman-Larsson's buyout balloons to $2.35 million for the 2024-25 season, then $4.77 million for the two seasons after that. With the Canucks needing to re-sign Elias Pettersson to a long-term deal, having that much dead money on the books is far from ideal.
The buyout will still be on the books through 2031, with a $2.17 million cap hit. There's a reason why this was something Allvin wanted to avoid.
At the same time, it's understandable that the Canucks would go this route. They had limited options for clearing cap space without losing assets and Ekman-Larsson struggled to such a degree this past season that keeping him in the lineup frequently felt untenable.
The upside to using a buyout now is the massive cap savings in the first year as the salary cap is still tight. As the cost of the buyout increases, the upper limit of the salary cap should increase with it, somewhat mitigating the damage.
Ultimately, this only serves to reinforce what a dreadful idea it was to trade for Ekman-Larsson in the first place.
UPDATE: The Canucks have made the buyout official.
