You don't think if you give a team the equivalent of 20-30 million dollars you won't get some premium assets along with that? I think some teams would be willing to pay to get out from under a contract (DiPietro...).
Well as has been mentioned I don't think anyone seriously considers trying to pay tens of millions of dollars in order to free up enough cap space to, what.. sign a second pairing defenseman? And even a Mickey Mouse franchise like the Islanders aren't going to see so little value in picks and prospects (that they have clearly been building around for years) as to throw away enough to justify a $20-30m investment from another team.
It would be great if the Canucks could pull something like this off but I just don't see it happening on the kind of scale that's being envisioned here. Maybe some team out there gets a first round pick but that's about as high as I see things going.
But hey, just for the hell of it.. what if these buyouts become a reality in addition to the idea of trading for cap space? The Canucks could trade for Rick Dipietro and an extra $10m of cap space over each year remaining in his contract, the Isles would be comfortably under the cap ceiling that whole time and the Canucks would have a monster advantage over other franchises.
It'd be pretty sweet if it were actually a possibility.
There should be a rule preventing players re-signing with the team that bought them out.
There almost certainly will be, and I believe there was one last time.