Buying him out this offseason would be a mistake. We'd be stuck with his cap hit for 4 years of 2.66m for the first two years, and 1.566 for the next two years, and we're not in a cap crunch now. If we buy him out next offseason, we're only stuck with it for three total seasons - 5.8m next season (with no cap crunch), 2.66 and 1.56 in the following two seasons. Basically, carrying his carcass for one more season buys us 1.56 in cap space later when we'll need to have fit new contracts for Kucherov, Point, Vasilevskiy, and Sergechev, while dealing with no contracts for any of our other D (except Hedman).