I think you can now buy-out the contract.
It’s all about LTIR, even though that’s never mentioned.
www.pensionplanpuppets.com
And the relevant CBA passage which is written in the form of
a list of what does count against the salary cap:
All Player Salary and Bonuses earned in a League Year by a Player who is in the second or later year of a multi-year SPC which was signed when the Player was age 35 or older (as of June 30 prior to the League Year in which the SPC is to be effective), but which Player is not on the Club’s Active Roster, Injured Reserve, Injured Non-Roster or Non-Roster, and regardless of whether, or where, the Player is playing, except to the extent the Player is playing under his SPC in the minor leagues, in which case only the Player Salary and Bonuses in excess of $100,000
shall count towards the calculation of Averaged Club Salary ...
Parsing out the meaning of this change: As long as the 35+ contract meets the conditions in the MOU, it won’t count
fully against the cap if the player is no longer on the roster. In other words, if they’ve retired or been bought out.
Players on 35+ contracts
can be bought out, despite a common belief that they cannot be. Patrick Marleau’s deal was, in fact, bought out. The salary owed is reduced according to the buyout formula, and
until now, the full amount of the AAV remained on a team’s salary cap calculation for the full term of the deal unlike with other buyouts.
Under these new rules, the Leafs still couldn’t have bought out Marleau because his deal had signing bonuses in all years. But under these rules, it’s entirely possible that contract would not have been formulated that way.
Has the NHL done much to really deal with the trading in dead money deals? Likely not a lot, at least not until all deals on the books were signed under these rules, with an eye to either accepting they’re buyout-proof by giving them a structure that doesn’t meet the conditions above, or to holding that option open if the player declines beyond his value before the contract ends by conforming to those conditions.