A quick fact before we begin: According to CapFriendly, there have been 40 buyouts in the NHL over just the last three summers.



It isn’t an uncommon occurrence. It isn’t unique to any one team or general manager. And for players whose names show up on lists like this one, it’s less a damning black mark and more a reflection of the fact that there’s a salary cap and teams have to manage it.



Buyouts might be an unavoidable side effect of guaranteed contracts, in that nobody’s going to project the future with total accuracy all the time. They may also be an indication of the failings of NHL front offices. However we explain their prevalence, 80 per cent of the league’s teams (excluding Vegas) have made at least one buyout over the last three years.



(Even that statistic undersells matters, because all of those teams already had a chance to clear their books during a “compliance buyout” period in the summers of 2013...