The more I’ve thought about it, the more of a no brainer I think it is to get rid of Jarry via a buyout than retain salary. Jarry’s buyout is weird due to all of the signing bonus money at the end of it, so the yearly money is fairly tame outside of that awful 2025-2026. But with Malkin presumably retiring after next year, do you even care about Jarry’s dead cap at that point?
A Jarry buyout gives them a $1.7 million cap penalty next year and then has an awful $5 million cap penalty in 2025-2026. Beyond those two years, the cap penalty is less than $1 million. Hard to be upset about a Jarry buyout when 5/6 years of the buyout are pretty minimal cap penalties.
He can both give Marner a huge deal while filling out the bottom-6 with young guys and cap dumps, though. You can take Chychrun out of that lineup and replace him with POJ to save an additional $5 million to do that.
