Nearly twenty games into the season, we’re starting to get a good idea of what the Buffalo Sabres have in their new coach and new roster. We’re going to start running through a series of evaluations of the offseason leading into the year, determining whether it looks like a positive or negative move early on in the season. First up is the buyout of forward Jeff Skinner, which was met with varying opinions.
Buying out an underperforming 32-year-old player is not a new practice. Most big contracts do not age well for a 30 or older forward, as the aging curve generally shows a dip in production and overall impact. This was the case with Skinner, whose $9 million cap hit for three more seasons proved too much for the Sabres to stomach.
Skinner’s 2023-2024 season was pedestrian by his standards. He started the year well but tailed off in the second half and was dropped from the first line to the third. His 24 goals and 46 points were a 31% and 44% drop-off from the year prior, respectively.
Skinner Buyout
The Skinner buyout has a six-year implication on Buffalo’s salary cap. It’s a hefty price to pay, despite saving $7,555,555 on the cap this season and $7,333,333 overall. In actual dollars, the Sabres only owed Skinner $22 million in salary compared to the $27 million that remained on the cap.
The graphic above is a snippet from the since-bought CapFriendly, showing the details of the Skinner buyout. The move adds three years of navigating a reduced cap ceiling by $2,444,445 from the 2027-2028 season through 2029-2030.
Waiting another season to buy out Skinner would’ve drastically reduced the implications, but the Sabres felt pressured to overhaul the roster and push for the playoffs this season. Skinner was not a presumed fit with new head coach Lindy Ruff. The buyout gave the Sabres north of $31 million in cap space heading into free agency.
Sabres’ Cap Space
The biggest backlash of the Skinner buyout hit after the offseason transactions quieted. Some were skeptical of Buffalo’s ability to find the scoring to replace his near-28-goal full-season average immediately following the announcement, but the lack of an incoming bonafide top-six forward confirmed suspicions.
The Sabres barely dipped into the cap savings, which raised eyebrows as to why the move was made in the first place. Buffalo currently has the seventh-most cap space in the NHL, which doesn’t exactly signify “going for it”.
General manager Kevyn Adams alluded to the cap flexibility for an in-season transaction and has been reportedly trying to find an early trade partner. The active phone activity from Adams means one of two things – either they poorly assessed where the roster was at or the Sabres truly couldn’t find the right trade for a more impactful player in the offseason.
Sabres Trade News: Report: Sabres GM Has Been “Active” in Trade Market
Skinner in Edmonton
The true evaluation of whether buying out Skinner was the right move is ultimately decided by his post-Sabres performance. The Edmonton Oilers handed Skinner a one-year $3 million contract to presumably play with either Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl in a supporting, offensive role.
Skinner has four goals and seven points in 21 games so far this season, which is a 15-goal, 27-point pace over the full season. That’s another big drop-off from last season’s down year.
Digging in a little deeper, Evolving-Hockey lists Skinner as the worst Oilers forward by WAR (wins-above replacement) metrics. The Oilers have demoted him recently to the fourth line, to the extent that he had three games with under 12 minutes of ice time this month.
The expected goal and Corsi metrics hint that there’s some unrealized offensive production. In-season adjustments are fluid, so there’s ample opportunity for Skinner to turn things around. Still, the early-season trends are not positive for the forward in a contract year.
Sabres Skinner Buyout Determination
It’s not always an apples-to-apples comparison, but it seems the Sabres departed with Skinner at the right time in terms of production and impact. Sure, he could’ve regained the chemistry he had with Tage Thompson and Alex Tuch and succeded, but the inability to mesh with McDavid or Draisaitl suggests perhaps Skinner’s in the twilight of his career.
Skinner’s contractual impact will affect the Sabres for a while, so the longer they don’t take advantage of the newfound cap space, the less the buyout of Skinner makes sense. Otherwise, the Sabres could’ve simply healthy scratched the forward or sent him down to Rochester and avoided the extent of the cap penalties.
Until Kevyn Adams finds a trade partner and uses the cap savings to improve the team, the buyout of Jeff Skinner remains a head-scratcher. Even if it was addition by subtraction, there were better ways on paper to help the team.
