The 15-year, $67.5 million contract that goalie Rick DiPietro signed with the Islanders in 2006 was called a lifetime contract, but in the years that followed, as DiPietro was sidelined by injury after injury, it was derided as an albatross. Still, the Islanders stuck by DiPietro, refusing to cut him loose for a combination of reasons, not least among them the close relationship between DiPietro and the team owner, Charles Wang.

But on Tuesday, the Islanders finally gave up on DiPietro and placed him on waivers, ending a long, twisty saga that began in 2000. If no team claimed the 31-year-old DiPietro in 24 hours, the Islanders planned to use one of their two amnesty buyouts to get out of the remainder of his contract and make him a free agent.

“What do you tell a kid who says, ‘I want to be an Islander for life’?” Wang said in an interview days before DiPietro was waived. “He didn’t know things would turn out as they had.”

Neither did Wang, who negotiated the 2006 contract with DiPietro. In the run-up to that highly unusual negotiation, DiPietro fired his agent and Wang fired the Islanders’ general manager.