Buyout Period (June 29)

From the fringe, the Buffalo Sabres placed centre Cody Hodgson on unconditional waivers for the purpose of being bought out on Monday, as his tenure with the Sabres has been far from what it should have been.  In the 2015 season, he was only good for 6 goals and 13 points in 78 games, ranking him far away from being pool worthy.

He gets a mention for possibly being considered again, as an extreme long shot.

Hodgson had four years left on his deal, each coming with a cap hit of $4.25 million.  His buyout will cost the Sabres a shade under $800,000 per season for the next eight years, but his cap hit, thanks to the War on Ice calculator, will be just over $1 million for the 2016 season.

The Nashville Predators and Viktor Stalberg are about to part ways, as the team put the player on unconditional waivers in this instance as well, with the intention of buying out the last two years of the current contract out tomorrow.

The War on Ice calculator shows that Stalberg's buyout will ding the Predators cap hit at $666,667, both in 2016 and 2017 and then up to $1.17 million in the final two years.

Stalberg only picked up 10 points in 25 games with the club last season and was no longer seen as a viable player in their lineup, especially at a $3 million cap hit.

An interesting turn of events in the buyout process, as the Los Angeles Kings opted to terminate the contract of Mike Richards after he cleared waivers on Monday morning, instead of buying him out, citing a material breach of contract.  Of course, if we don't get much injury information out of the Kings, why should we think we'd get more information about this as well.

There is a belief that this will go through the grievance process, which would explain the lack of information, but as of right now, with the way the paperwork stands, the 30-year old centre is now a free agent and the Kings don't owe him anything and only a recapture penalty would count against the cap for the team.