Edited Sep. 1, 2021 at 8:08 p.m.
Quoting: nintendofan721
Minnesota’s double buyout was a stupid move and is going to hurt them badly in the next few years. Also he signed Alex Goligoski for too much. I just feel this offseason is enough for me to put Guerin at the bottom of the list even below Jim Benning
Quoting: mokumboi
To be fair, he wasn;t the one who signed those two deals. And Goligoski's contract is only one season. Guerin has made some good trades, chief among them the outstanding Zucker dump heist.
1) It's been reported by the Wild's Athletic beat-writer Michael Russo that there's a gentleman's agreement between Guerin and Goligoski to extend the contract providing things work out well for all evolved after January for a much smaller price point of around $2-2.5M. It was done this way so that it would avoid a higher AAV cap hit that would of come with a longer contract term once the Parise/Suter buyouts go up after this season. So instead of having a AAV cap hit of say around $3.5-4M per on a 2-3 contract term length, Goligoski gets more upfront this year then what would of been allowed within the variable threshold of player contracts as dictated by the rules if the CBA.
Now, it's not illegal to do it this way as nothing is written into the the contract that implicitly states this is the case. It's just strictly a gentleman's agreement between the two. It's still within the rules, but it's a pretty interesting loophole to say the least. But it does make that overpay far more understandable.
And even then, it's for one year, when the Wild have the cap space to do it. No harm, no foul.
2) You can argue the double buyout was stupid all you want. But try looking at it from the Wild's perspective before you mouth off.
Neither player was playing up to those $7.6M cap hits anymore and that cap space would of been useless whether they were on the roster or not. For the next FOUR YEARS. The chances of either player playing out the remainder of those contracts was extremely unlikely and the potential danger of them retiring before they were up meant the team would of been hit with a Cap Recapture Penalty that would hit and devastate the team far worse then the buyouts ever would.
The buyout for both was $4.6M this year, $12.3M next year, $14.7M for years 3 and 4, and finally $1.6M for the final 5-8 years. The team saved roughly $10M this off-season because of the buyouts. It's not an easy pill to swallow but it's manageable.
If the team had been hit with the Cap Recapture instead, they're hit with a $7.6M dead cap hit every year until the Recapture is paid off. What people don't understand is that while both Parise and Suter had cap hits of $7.6M, that was just their AAV, they were due to make much... much less in actual based player salary. They were set to make $6M this year, $2M next year, and $1M for the final 2 years. What this means is that in layman's terms is that the Cap Recapture total that would have to be payed back by the team gets
larger the longer they play and the closer to the final year of their contracts but retire before they're up.
What it basically boils down to is it is more or less cheaper to buyout both now and gain far more cost and cap space certainty now rather than leaving it to chance and fate. By buying out both now, Guerin can now plan accordingly for a known dead cap that he can work around by various means and ways vs the uncertainty of getting hit with a Recapture at the worst possible moment or time in the next 4 years.
For example, while the team is competing for a cup in the next few seasons if all was going well and it was business as usual.