Red Wings to buy out recently acquired player

The Detroit Red Wings are buying out the final year of recently acquired winger Kailer Yamamoto’s contract, according to TSN’s Darren Dreger.

Dreger adds that “Detroit strongly considered keeping him but couldn’t make moves to make it work.” 

The move will save Detroit $2.66M of Yamamoto’s $3.1M cap hit for this season, at a cost of $533k on their cap for next year.

It’s a somewhat curious move, as many initially viewed the Red Wings’ acquisition of Yamamoto as an earnest investment from Detroit in the possibility of a Yamamoto rebound.

He was a 20-goal, 41-point scorer just last year, but it appears the combination Yamamoto’s production decline as well as the somewhat crowded state of the Red Wings’ top-nine meant that it was in Detroit’s best interest to eat a relatively small cap penalty rather than roster the player at a $3.1M cap hit.

This move means that Detroit took on the burden of buying out Yamamoto for the purpose of acquiring Klim Kostin’s RFA negotiation rights, rather than due to any interest in acquiring Yamamoto himself.

Kostin has been rumored to be considering a KHL exit (though that could obviously be no more than a negotiation tactic) and could be seeking a raise above his $750k cap hit from last season thanks to a quality campaign with the Edmonton Oilers.

For the any contract the Red Wings weigh giving Kostin, they’ll need to include the small amount of dead money afforded to Yamamoto in their value equation.