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 have a few deals they would love to clear from the books, but are buyouts a practical solution for any of them?

Darnell Nurse’s $9.25 million contract has been an inescapable topic of discussion in Edmonton over the last half-decade. Unfortunately, its bonus-laden structure makes it one of the least buyout-friendly deals in the NHL.

Buying out Nurse would save the Oilers just over $1.5 million next season, and $733,333 for the following three seasons. For all of Nurse’s flaws, he’s still a useful NHL player. It makes no sense to pay him over $8 million to not play for your team.

The Oilers shopped Nurse at the 2026 trade deadline, and more recently, he requested a trade and submitted a list of teams that he would waive his no-movement clause for. If he’s willing to work with management to facilitate a trade, Edmonton may finally get out of its most controversial contract.

The Oilers traded for Tristan Jarry six months ago, taking on his entire $5.375 million contract that runs for two more seasons. Jarry was having a brilliant start to the season, but his game tanked almost immediately after arriving in Edmonton. He posted an abysmal .858 save percentage with the Oilers, which is worse than any goaltender who played at least 10 games this season.

Buying out Jarry would save the Oilers $666,667 off the cap in year one and $1.167 million in year two. After that, they would be penalized $458,333 for an additional two years. It wouldn’t make sense.

The most logical course of action at this point is to either bank on a Jarry rebound next season or trade him for another reclamation project.

Edmonton traded for Trent Frederic ahead of the 2025 trade deadline and signed him to a massive extension later that summer: an eight-year deal carrying an AAV of $3.85 million.

Frederic was a valuable player for the Bruins, but max-term contracts for bottom-six forwards are extremely rare. In year one of his contract, Frederic showed exactly why that’s the case. He scored four goals and added three assists for seven points in 74 games — by far the worst offensive totals of his NHL career. Now, the Oilers are stuck with a seven-year commitment to Frederic, whose game hasn’t looked worth a $3.85 million cap hit in at least two years.

If the Oilers bought out Frederic, they would save roughly $1.5-$1.8 million in cap space per season over the next seven years, then incur a $821,429 penalty for another seven years. The savings are less than $2 million, which makes it difficult to justify carrying dead cap through 2040. It would be less risky to simply hang on to him and hope for a bounce-back.

The buyout window is open, but Edmonton’s biggest cap problems can’t be erased by eating contracts this summer. Darnell Nurse’s deal is notoriously buyout-proof, and other problem contracts like Frederic’s and Jarry’s aren’t much better.

If the Oilers are going to create cap flexibility this summer, Bowman will need to work the phones.

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