Just 48 hours after the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup on Sunday night, the first milestone of the offseason has arrived: the NHL’s buyout window.

PuckPedia describes buyouts as “a mechanism that allows a team to end a player’s contract early by paying a portion of the remaining value over a period that is twice as long as the remaining term on the original contract, with a specific amount still counting against the salary cap each season.”

The Edmonton Oilers are no strangers to buying out bad contracts. Over the past 10 years, they’ve used this method to get out of deals with Benoit Pouliot (2017), Andrej Sekera (2019), James Neal (2021) and Jack Campbell (2024). Of those names, Campbell is the only one the team still pays annually, and that will continue until 2029-30.

Buyouts have helped Edmonton open up cap space in the past, but they aren’t practical for every contract.

Signing bonuses are guaranteed; therefore, they continue to count against a team’s cap even if the contract is bought out. As a result, teams hardly save any money when they buy out contracts structured with significant signing bonuses.

The buyout window will close on June 30, giving teams two weeks to decide whether to eat a contract. The Oilers........

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