When Alex Jefferies filed for salary arbitration earlier this month, it was a surprising move on the surface. After all, he was coming off back-to-back 29-point seasons in the AHL and has yet to make his NHL debut. These aren’t typically the types of players who file for arbitration.
However, his filing ultimately gave the Islanders a second buyout window. Now that Jefferies has agreed to a new contract, GM Mathieu Darche has a decision to make on whether to use that second window. It will open up early in the week and last for just 48 hours.
It has been a fairly quiet summer for the Isles. They brought in winger Matias Maccelli, defenseman Matthew Kessel, and goalie Vitek Vanecek in free agency but the latter two are more depth players than regulars. Maccelli, meanwhile, replaces Max Shabanov who went non-tendered to avoid salary arbitration rights and ultimately landed in Minnesota.
New York also re-signed defenseman Tony DeAngelo to a two-year deal.
For a team that didn’t make the playoffs last season, that level of minimal turnover would seemingly come as a surprise. But part of the reason for it was that they were already rather tight to the salary cap. With the limited activity, the team still projects to be less than $3MM under the Upper Limit to start next season, per PuckPedia.
They just don’t have the financial flexibility to do a whole lot.
That was the byproduct of some of Darche’s midseason moves. While they were able to utilize LTIR to bring in Ondrej Palat and Brayden Schenn, the fact that both weren’t on expiring contracts meant that things were going to be tight this summer, even with the $8.5MM jump to the salary cap. With what they have left, they have enough to save some room for in-season injury recalls and maybe another depth addition.
If they want to do more than that, one way to open up the cap space would be to utilize this second buyout window. As a refresher, only players who were on the team’s roster at the trade deadline and have a cap hit of $4MM or more are eligible to be bought out during this segment. (Anthony Duclair is at $3.5MM while oft-injured winger Pierre Engvall is at $3MM, so they’re not eligible.)
Out of the 11 players that the Islanders have that make at least $4MM, there is only one realistic buyout candidate, that being Palat. Ineffective offensively with the Devils, he was even more ineffective with the Isles after the trade, scoring just once in 29 games. For a forward, that’s not remotely close to a good return.
The 35-year-old has one year left on his contract at a $6MM cap charge. His deal was slightly front-loaded, resulting in a 2026-27 salary of $4.95MM. Two-thirds of that would be owed over two years on a buyout, meaning that the cap hit of that move would be $1.65MM in both 2026-27 and 2027-28.
Basically, they’d take on $1.65MM in dead money on the cap in 2027-28 but open up $4.35MM in savings for the upcoming season. That would be enough for them to afford some of the remaining free agent forwards, including wingers Vladimir Tarasenko, Michael Bunting, and Eeli Tolvanen, all of whom project to be much more productive than Palat.
Typically, second buyout windows come and go with little fanfare; they’re rarely actually used. But there is a legitimate case to be made that Darche could improve his roster by going this route with Palat and using the savings to replace him with someone on the open market. The GM now has a few days to decide if he wants to buck the trend and pull the trigger on a buyout or stick with the status quo.