With Wednesday being the last day that teams could put players on waivers with the purpose of eventually buying them out of their contracts and some familiar, yet unsurprising, names are hitting the waiver wire today according to TSN’s Bob McKenzie to prepare for the oncoming free agent frenzy at noon on Thursday.
Anaheim – Nathan Oystrick
Edmonton – Ethan Moreau, Robert Nilsson, Patrick O’Sullivan
Tampa Bay – Todd Fedoruk
New York Rangers – Donald Brashear, Patrick Rissmiller, Aaron Voros
If these players go unclaimed on waivers, where they’ll sit for the next 24 hours, then they’re eligible to have their contracts bought out by their teams and then making them unrestricted free agents. What does the buyout cost a team that does so? It’s 2/3’s of the cost of the contract spread out over the number of years remaining on the deal for players over 26 years of age when their contract is terminated. Those younger than 26 when their contract is bought out, it’s 1/3 of their contract over the length of the deal. We’ll let you get your abacus out to calculate how much it will cost your teams should they end up buying them out.
As for the players who were waived yesterday that we told you about, they all cleared waivers and are officially eligible to be bought out if their teams decide to do that.