Ryan Suter: contract bought out (for the second time in his career)

It’s June 27, the eve of the NHL amateur draft. Kent Hughes and his team are planning to meet a few prospects today to be as ready as possible when they select the fifth player overall tomorrow.

Last year, Hughes completed a major transaction 24 hours before the draft. Will he do the same this year?

Remember that the year before, he waited until he was on the Bell Centre floor before announcing “his” summer deal (Alexander Romanov to New York, then Kirby Dach to Montreal).

Things are really starting to heat up on the Bettman circuit: teams can buy out contracts from today until 5:00 p.m. on June 30.

And the Stars won’t be fooling around with the puck: Jeff Marek has just announced that Jim Nill has decided to buy out the last year of Ryan Suter’s contract.

Suter was set to earn a real salary of $4.3 million and count for $3.65 million on the Stars’ payroll in 2024-25. Instead, he’ll earn $1.43 million per season for two years, and count for just $783,334 in 2024-25, then $1.43 million the following season. This is a good business decision for the Stars. With the salary cap set to rise by around $10 million by June 2026, Jim Nill had room for such a buyout.

It must be said that in 2023-24, Suter, 39, played less than 20 minutes on average per game for only the second time in his career. The other was in his rookie season in 2005-06.

He still managed to finish the season with 17 points and a plus-14 rating. It’s worth noting that he didn’t miss a single game in the three regular seasons he played in Dallas.

It will be interesting to see whether a team makes him an offer of $1 or $2 million on July 1… or whether Suter will have to resign himself to hanging up his skates. After all, he has played 1,444 regular games in the Bettman circuit!

Ryan Suter has become one of the few NHL players to have had his contract bought out twice. In July 2021, the Wild decided to buy out the front-loaded contracts of Suter and Zach Parise, which didn’t cost the two players that much money, but it did mortgage the Wild’s accounting kit for four seasons (the last one this year).

Since he has a full non-movement clause, Suter doesn’t have to go through the waivers before being bought out.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Jeff Skinner, Jack Campbell, Kevin Hayes, Torey Krug, Nate Schmidt, Ryan Johansen, Cal Petersen, Conor Sheary, Cam Atkinson, Philipp Grubauer, Justin Holl and Jean-Gabriel Pageau, all names linked to contract buyout rumours in recent days.

Overtime

– My buddy JT is having fun these days in Florida. In my opinion, he thinks he’s the one who won the Stanley Cup. #4h49AM

– It’s now official: the Canadiens’ rookies will face the Maple Leafs twice at the Bell Centre in September.

The Canadiens’ and Toronto Maple Leafs’ top prospects will cross swords on September 14 and 15 at the Bell Centre, as part of the Face-à-face des espoirs 2024 presented by @IGAQC in collaboration with Voisin!

Press release ↓ #GoHabsGohttps://t.co/inqnsMY8Dc

– Montreal Canadiens (@CanadiensMTL) June 27, 2024

– Ken Holland has told the Oilers that he will not be returning to the organization.