Discipline Daddy
Brentcent Van Burns
Regarding Darling's buyout. The rules for buyout for players over 26 is that you pay 2/3rds of the remaining contract over twice the remaining time. Darling's average salary is $4.15M and he has 3 years left after this one. Thus, if we bought him out after the Stanley Cup this year, we'd be on the hook for $1.383M for six years, until 2023-2024.
Note that the Wisniewski buyout ends after this year, but the Semin buyout of $2.333M goes until 2020-2021. I personally think the most prudent move for the Canes is to hold onto Darling's contract for one more year. If he plays putrid again, we buy him out and only go for 4 years. If he plays better, we can trade him or he helps our team.
I think the risk/reward solution is to sign a 3rd goalie and hope that the competition helps propel them into better years. That said, to have a 3 goalie scenario we need to sign Cam AND sign another decent goalie, or we need to sign 2 decent goalies. If we go UFA, our best options are Carter Hutton, Antti Raanta, Anton Khudobin (lol), Antti Niemi, Jonathan Bernier, Kari Lehtonen, Ondrej Pavelec, Michael Hutchinson, or Jaro Halak. All of these goalies currently boast a SV% better than Ward's. The UFAs fall quickly off a cliff after Halak to players like Eddie Lack. I also haven't included a couple of goalies who have only played a few games, like Harri Sateri, Houdini's brother.
Note that the Wisniewski buyout ends after this year, but the Semin buyout of $2.333M goes until 2020-2021. I personally think the most prudent move for the Canes is to hold onto Darling's contract for one more year. If he plays putrid again, we buy him out and only go for 4 years. If he plays better, we can trade him or he helps our team.
I think the risk/reward solution is to sign a 3rd goalie and hope that the competition helps propel them into better years. That said, to have a 3 goalie scenario we need to sign Cam AND sign another decent goalie, or we need to sign 2 decent goalies. If we go UFA, our best options are Carter Hutton, Antti Raanta, Anton Khudobin (lol), Antti Niemi, Jonathan Bernier, Kari Lehtonen, Ondrej Pavelec, Michael Hutchinson, or Jaro Halak. All of these goalies currently boast a SV% better than Ward's. The UFAs fall quickly off a cliff after Halak to players like Eddie Lack. I also haven't included a couple of goalies who have only played a few games, like Harri Sateri, Houdini's brother.