9M!!

Man, I really do wish teams like Buffalo would weaponize their cap space like this. $9M is a huge overpayment for Kuemper, but the flip side is you're only eating that for 2 years, and like you said, bridging to hopefully one of the UPL/Levi/Portillo trio to take over as #1.

And it makes a ton of sense for Kuemper with the shorter term, too - if he signed 4x$5.5M this summer, he'd take home $22M gross over the next 4 years - this would pay him $18M over the next 2, meaning if he can stay healthy/play well enough to get 2x$3 in the summer of 2024(a pretty likely scenario IMO) he's gonna walk away with an extra couple million. Not too bad a price for a couple winters in Buffalo!

If you sign Darcy, let Anderson run off into the sunset (literally). I dont know if he'll want to postpone retirement for 1 more year to be the back up on a team thats not a surefire cup contender