What will the Canes do?

The question of a Kotkaniemi buyout

The Carolina Hurricanes’ season has come to an abrupt and bitter end again, and in the aftermath there have been a lot of discussions and conversations going on in various places on the Internet about what the team should do next.

On Twitter/X today I’ve seen quite a bit of chatter about whether it’s time for the Canes to buy out the contract of Jesperi Kotkaniemi, which he signed in March of 2022. That contract was an 8-year, $4.82 million AAV deal that was made with the belief the young center would continue to develop and become the player the Canes wanted him to be.

Two years later and it’s looking like the Canes missed.. Kotkaniemi had a 60-game stretch at the end of last season and the beginning of this one where he looked like he might be working out for the Hurricanes, but an abrupt and still-mysterious collapse beginning sometime in late November or early December and continuing on for the rest of the year and into the playoffs seemingly eradicated all of his offensive potential and a good bit of his prior defensive ability as well. That 60 game good stretch was followed by what has been, to date, the worst stretch of his career, and it’s not surprising in the wake of it that questions about whether he has any future in Carolina should have arisen.

Fortunately for the Canes–and for Kotkaniemi, as well–the contract Kotkaniemi signed contains an easy buy-out provision. The Canes can buy out Kotkaniemi any time before his 26th birthday for 1/3 of his cost. If they do it now they’re looking at approximately $10 million total spread over 12 years, a savings of around $20 million on the whole contract.

So the question: can the Canes buy out Kotkaniemi? is answered with an affirmative; they can, and it wouldn’t be hard. But there are a few other questions to answer. Should they buy him out now? Should they attempt to make a trade instead? Or should they postpone either decision for sometime next season? Let’s look at all of these options.

The case for an immediate buyout

Even though the buyout for Kotkaniemi would be relatively simple and not too expensive, there’s always a hesitation on the part of front offices to load the future with dead cap space, however small. There’s always the risk, too, that continuing to pay Kotkaniemi could become an embarrassment if he signs with a new team and succeeds there.

But if the Canes need the approximately $4 million in net cap hit savings to sign or re-sign players who are important to the team, those minor concerns should go by the wayside. If Kotkaniemi’s contract is an obstacle to building the roster the Canes want they should take this action promptly. It would be in the best interests not only of the team but also of the player, who would have been a healthy scratch for the entire playoff run if Jesper Fast hadn’t been injured in the last game of the season, and that should tell us everything we need to know about Kotkaniemi’s status at this point.

The question, though, is whether the Canes actually need this money to make their signings happen. One thing we know about the Hurricanes is that they have set prices based on market value, and once a price is set it doesn’t usually change. In other words, buying out Kotkaniemi might help them find enough cap room to do some of what they want to do this offseason, but it won’t involve offering extra money to unsigned UFAs who might be courted by other teams. So I suspect if this happens it will happen later in the offseason when the picture of how many players are still considering re-signing in Carolina has been cleared up.

The case for a trade

Although some people (many of them Habs fans) would like to think of Kotkaniemi as untradeable, the situation isn’t quite that dire. There are two main types of teams, and a possible third type, who might be willing to enter into trade talks for Kotkaniemi.

The first is the team that just doesn’t have any center depth at all. There are several teams that fit this description, and their fans are already making hypothetical trade suggestions. Most of these teams, though, would either want some salary retention, a sweetener, or possibly a shifting of a bad contract of their own in order to get the deal done. The salary retention would have to be less expensive than a buyout for Carolina to be willing, I suspect, but the other two possibilities are more plausible.

The second is the team that has trouble meeting minimum cap thresholds. For those teams, Kotkaniemi’s contract helps them solve the ongoing problem of not having enough players signed to anything more than ELCs to get to the cap floor. The fact that he’s been playing on the wing lately would likely help some of those teams look at Kotkaniemi as an option for their different kind of cap space problem, because even if they have adequate center space a middle six center/winger might still have some appeal.

The possible third type is the type that thinks Kotkaniemi still has some potential and would be worth attempting to “fix” for their team’s needs. They would still have the option of a buyout for two more years. Such a team might see a player who has played 398 regular season games and 69 playoff games before his 24th birthday as a player worth taking a gamble on for a year or two. If his latent potential to be a serviceable 2C actually hit, the new team would have the player on that $4.82 mil AAV contract for 6 years. If the experiment failed yet again, well, the buyout would still be cheap.

But if another team decided to do that, is there any chance the Canes are still considering it?

The case for waiting

The Canes have another possible direction: they can wait a little longer before deciding to end their contracted relationship with Kotkaniemi. If they need the buyout to sign players they want, this isn’t worth doing. But if they have the cap space without clearing his cap hit, it might make sense for the Canes to punt this decision a little further down the road.

In some ways this wouldn’t be the best option for the player; it’s unlikely for a breakdown in trust to be rebuilt, and if that has happened it would be best for both sides to move on. But if there are other factors at work the Canes could benefit from waiting in three possible ways.

First, just like my hypothetical third trade team above, the Canes could still end up with a player who has figured out how to unlock his potential and who becomes a good player for them. They can buy out his contract at any time over the next two years, so it’s not a risk to keep things going if they think there’s still a chance of that.

Second, if Kotkaniemi improves enough to increase his trade value, the Canes could find themselves willing to make a pre-deadline trade at any point between October and the trade deadline–and the trade would not be a disadvantageous one at that point. It would just be a normal hockey trade; they could still move on from the player but they would get something they want in return without having to lose assets in the process.

Third, if things go badly from the get-go, the Canes have resumed their affiliation with the Chicago Wolves and could put Kotkaniemi on waivers to send him to the AHL. There would likely be a risk of losing him on waivers, but unlike a buyout or a disadvantageous trade it would cost the Canes absolutely nothing. The new team would absorb the contract and that would be that. If, on the other hand, no team made a claim (entirely possible, since most teams don’t have a spare $5 million in cap space sitting around at random points in the season), Kotkaniemi would simply play for the Wolves like any other player sent down.

Buyout or not?

The Canes will likely be considering all of these things and more. I do think, though, that contract buyouts may be seen a little bit more negatively from the perspective of NHL front offices than fans may realize. In Los Angeles, the Kings have already said they won’t be buying out PL Dubois, despite the disappointment in the player whose contract is an 8-year, 8.5 million AAV deal. The Kings have almost no time to buy Dubois out; his 26th birthday is rapidly approaching, yet they have said they are not planning to consider a buyout and will continue to work with the player.

In that sense, I think any decision regarding Kotkaniemi and a buyout will come down to whether or not it’s a necessary move to clear enough cap space to sign or re-sign the players the team is convinced they must have. If not, I suspect they would either prefer to trade him without too much loss or else to wait until there’s no question of a loss. To me, it’s an open question right now whether Kotkaniemi will start next season with the Canes or not, even though my own current belief is that it would be best for all parties concerned if he didn’t, whether that involves a buyout or something else entirely.