Instead of having a single compliance buyout to combat the low increase in the salary cap (at the cap crunch for MANY teams), allow teams a one time option this summer to recalculate the cap hit for their players and let them choose to use: (1) the current calculated cap or (2) the updated cap hit.
Realistically, this method would only work in situations where the contract was somewhat frontloaded
See the example for NYR below, positively affects the cap of 5 different players:
Panarin - He is owed 3m salary + 26m in bonus money for $29m total. He has 3 years left. 29/3 = $9,666,667 (savings of ~$1,976,190)
Kreider - He is owed 17m salary + 3m in bonus money for $20m total. He has 4 years left. 20/4=$5,000,000 (savings of $1,500,000)
Trocheck - He is owed 18.875m in salary + 14.5m in bonus money for $33.375m total. He has 6 years left. 33.375/6 = $5,562,500 (savings of $62,500)
Fox - He is owed 38m in salary + 17.5m in bonus money for a total of $45.5m. He has 6 years left. 44.5/6 = $9,250,000 (savings of $250,000)
Trouba - He is owed 20m in salary + 0 in bonus money for a total of $20m. He has 3 years left. 20/3 = $6,666,667 (savings of $1,333,333)
Overall this would save NYR just over $5m in cap for next year. I'm working on a spreadsheet to help figure other teams at but if yall wanna have a go at your favorite team, feel free.
Other examples of players and savings
Tavares- 3m
Kucherov-1.5m
Karlsson - 1.75m
Seguin - 2.3m
Carlson - 2m
Oshie - 1.25m
Price - 2.5m
OEL - 1m
Bobrovsky - 2.5m
Burns - 3m (total, there was retention on the trade so it would have to be distributed per that retention %)
Hayes - 1.5m
Another option I thought may be interesting is to allow teams going forward to use the Cap Accrual each season to pay down the bonuses due to one player per year, then recalculate the remaining contract. Again using NYR as an example, using the current ~$7m they have in cap space at the trade deadline (I cannot calculate for later days myself), they could advance 7m on Panarin's bonus money due. After doing this and restructuring the contract, (29-7)/3 = $7,333,334 for a savings of $4.3m.
So TB could save 1.5 mil on one of the already best value contracts in the league.
essentially that is the purpose of this with the cap not projected to go up again. it's a half measure, but i think better than compliance buyouts because it keeps a team together but still slightly punishes teams for ludicrous contracts. this would also help facilitate trade 100% as the cap hits wouldn't be as severe