Should the Colorado Avalanche buyout Brad Stuart?

When the NHL buyout period officially opens up today, the Colorado Avalanche are only expected to give thought to one using it for one name: Brad Stuart. The 36-year old defenseman has proven unable to be a positive on-ice contributor and the relationship with the organization may not be the rosiest around. It’s a complicated question with far-reaching consequences so let’s jump into the pros and cons of buying out Brad Stuart.

Pros

The reality of Stuart’s contract is that it’s a 35-plus contract, meaning it came into effect after his 35th birthday and protects him from a team jettisoning him with reduced salary cap implications. Stuart only has one year remaining on the contract with a salary cap hit of $3.6 million. While not a prohibitive figure, with the Avalanche in play for Alexander Radulov’s services and facing hefty extensions for Nathan MacKinnon and Tyson Barrie, every dollar counts.

Unfortunately for Colorado, those dollars could be lost no matter happens with Stuart. Should they choose to buy him out, the primary benefit would come in the form of removing the contract from the organization’s books, even if his salary cap hit remains for one season. If Stuart successfully recovers from the back surgery that ended his season prematurely last year, Colorado faces the dilemma of not only an increasingly ineffective player vying for playing time but a veteran presence that may already be disgruntled looming large in the locker room.

There were rumblings of discontent last season as Stuart was a healthy scratch on multiple occasions early on before his injury and the veteran was said not to take kindly to what he perceived as a slap in the face. Indeed, the atmosphere between Stuart and Patrick Roy was a chilly one and the organization’s cloak and dagger tactics in removing members of their front office were on display with their handling of Stuart as he rarely made appearances at the practice facility before it was announced his season was over at the end of a press conference as a mere afterthought.

There may be no financial relief coming for the organization in the event of a buyout but they may simply have no interest in allowing a player whose relationship with the club has soured to return to its locker room and be a potentially disruptive force in a season that could make or break the Joe Sakic and Patrick Roy regime.

Cons

There’s zero financial relief involved here. The Avalanche can’t get out of the $3.6 million cap hit if they buy him out. Theoretically, they could use a draft pick to entice a team with oceans of cap space to take on Stuart’s contract for a season and give Colorado the much-needed breathing room. Florida just recently did this with Marc Savard’s cap hit but it cost them a second round selection and for a team who desperately needs to rebuild its prospect pipeline, sacrificing such a valuable draft pick for one year of salary cap relief is the kind of short-sighted move that has gotten them into the trouble they’re already in.

While the Avalanche were up against the NHL’s 50 contract limit last season, it’s much less of a factor right now and the appeal of removing Stuart’s contract simply for the sake of staying away from 50 again is very limited. The Avalanche sit behind Arizona and tied with St. Louis for second-fewest contracts in the league right now at 27 (Arizona has 26). If the Avalanche get into another contract crunch, it won’t be because of not buying out Brad Stuart.

The primary reason for not buying out Stuart? He’s a 36-year old coming off major back surgery with an organization that doesn’t seem interested in him playing for them again. Given those circumstances, maybe Stuart, whose play has slipped badly over the last several seasons, calls it a career after 1,056 NHL games and goes home while still collecting on his final NHL contract.

Should Stuart be unable, or uninterested, in getting healthy enough to play again, the Avalanche could simply invoke the convoluted rules of long-term injured reserve, or LTIR, which could theoretically provide the Avalanche an additional $3.6 million in cap space to work with. It’s not quite so simple, however, as the LTIR rules are as follows, courtesy of CapFriendly.com

When a player is placed on LTIR, their cap hit technically remains on the teams cap payroll and it continues to count as it always did. It also does not provide the club with additional cap-space savings that can be banked for future use while the team operates below the salary cap. Instead, LTIR provides relief if the club’s averaged club salary, or payroll, begins to exceed the upper limit. The amount of relief that the club receives is calculated on the day the player is placed on LTIR.

So should someone in the Avalanche actually make heads or tails of that paragraph, the Avs could essentially continue spending money like Stuart doesn’t exist. The downside of this, of course, could be that he does in fact exist and decides he hasn’t seen the end of his career yet and actually gets healthy enough to return.

Verdict

The biggest upside of buying out Stuart is it brings finality to an ugly situation and allows the organization to move on. The biggest downside is the Avs lose the ability to trade Stuart’s contract and opportunity to place him on LTIR, forfeiting the $3.6 million in cap space. What the organization decides could have a significant impact on how they approach a summer in which the salary cap could decrease. What do you think the organization should do?