Quoting: AFOX10900
ZAR isnt fantastic, and with the emergence of Lafferty he's easily replaceable, and i said the player/ pick could be changed out, and what we do save over a buyout (what I'm assuming you're talking about) is 3 years on the contract, and if you say we won't be competitive, both Letang and Geno have said (reportedly) that they'd like to sign 3 year deals after their current ones, and we'll still be paying guys like Hornqvist (for a year... assuming he somehow isn't LTIRed by then) and Tanev, and I doubt a team with Crosby will ever tank, no matter how much he declines, for the next 6 years we will attempt to compete
Lets just clear this up. Malkins next contract he will be 36 years old. Do you believe for one moment he's going to command top dollar at 36 years old?
If he comes back at 36 its at a discount looking to win another cup.
Furthermore I highly doubt with a 35+ contract they are signing with 3 years term. You can't buy it out or anything like that.
None of these guys on contracts expiring are coming back on big deals. none of them.
Not Malkin, Not Letang, and that's if they can even keep up still. Which is asking a lot.
Hornqvist has expansion draft written all over him. He won't be here after next season.
And while I don't believe ZAR is irreplaceable, he has shown a lot of life on this team, especially this year. He's clearly one of their better bottom 6 forwards currently. He's also a PK guy.
The real issue here is you are worried about carrying a less than 1 mil cap hit for 3 extra years as if they will be tight against the cap then with this current roster. And that's ridiculous.
They will have more than enough cap room when Malkin's and Letang's deals expires. The only way they are close to the cap is bringing in new faces. Even then you are looking at huge raises in the cap by then with the new TV deal, the expansion team, and other growing revenue. So the % of cap of that less than 1 million hit for the final 3 years of the buy out, will be smaller and smaller. Close to being less than 1% of the total cap.
It's not worth worrying about 3 years down the line. Especially when you are only saving 250k now.
The only way moving him works is if you can save the 1 million you would buy him out at now. That's it.
Otherwise it's just not worth it. Because saving 250k does not help this team now, and the future issues are really really small.