T.J. Brodie, Kailer Yamamoto, Mike Hoffman headline possible buyout candidates

Frank Seravalli was joined by Tyler Yaremchuk to discuss which players could be bought out during the NHL’s buyout window on the latest episode of "Daily Faceoff Live."

Tyler Yaremchuk: You had your list last month of the top five buyout candidates starting with Kailer Yamamoto and including Mike Reilly, Mikael Granlund, Anthony Mantha and Ryan Suter. I would add a guy like Matt Murray in there, and on the DFO Rundown you brought up Joel Armia of the Montreal Canadiens. Are any of these a smart buyout as I rattle off the names, and which ones do you think might happen but are perhaps short-sighted?

Frank Seravalli: Well, I can share some intel with you with regards to someone like Kailer Yamamoto. I think enough teams have already stepped up and had conversations with the Edmonton Oilers that at the very worst case they think they can unload him without having to attach an asset to him. So, that’s obviously a lot more palatable, even though the buyout is small, in terms of some $400,000 on your cap. You would certainly rather have no cap hit than have one at all.

I think that’s something that the Oilers are looking at. When it comes to some other guys on the list and the calculus for some teams becomes can we just survive one more year?

I think Matt Murray is an LTIR candidate, and in fact I think the Toronto Maple Leafs are in fact trying to move that contract if they can, because they don’t want to be operating in LTIR if they can avoid it. Mike Hoffman is a guy from the Montreal Canadiens that they’re trying to move — also they’re trying to give him away for free. They don’t want to attach anything to him in terms of a pick.

Then the push for that becomes for a Canadiens team that probably isn’t going to make the playoffs next season, can you just survive the first part of the year on the cap and then trade him at the deadline, potentially then retain half and maybe that becomes a lot more attractive option instead of just giving him away for free? Just hang on to him for a bit, and then you have a trade-deadline asset to move.

That’s one of the big things that GMs kind of joke about now, Tyler, is that’s the new line of thinking that that’s the way one GM is selling it to another. Hey, look, I’ll trade you this asset now for free, then in six months you have an awesome trade-deadline asset that you can flip. So maybe you’re not getting anything for him now, but you can get something for him later if you’re able to wield your cap space appropriately.

There’s a couple of sneaky buyouts out there, and one that I have in the back of my mind is T.J. Brodie of the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’s a zero-dollar cap charge for this upcoming season if you were to buy Brodie out of the last year of his deal. Two seasons from now it would be a $2.5 million cap charge, again, theoretically when the cap is going up by $7 million to $8 million. So if you could move off of T.J. Brodie’s $5 million and have a zero-dollar charge, yes you need to replace him, but you could potentially give Brad Treliving some money to play with.

The only thing I wonder about is that T.J. Brodie is obviously a guy that Brad Treliving knows pretty well. What are his thoughts on that, and is he better off just keeping him for the year?

You can watch the rest of the episode here…