Can Canes buyout Gardiner? I thought he was on LTIR. It might just be twitter hearsay so just wondering

He’s healthy now and on ice. He still has to pass a physical but once he does, Carolina is probably buying him out.

I think you’re sleeping on KK. I would swap KK and necass roles here but other than that, I would have nearly the same team. Knowing rod, the only players that will consistently play in the same role on the forwards are Aho as 1C, and staal and fast playing together as shut down players. Hate to say it but we will probably see martinook playing on the first line at some point this season because whenever rod jumbles up the lines, it always seems like martinook is playing with either aho or svech.

Did Necas file for arbitration? In order to have a special buyout period, they need an arb case.

He’s not arb eligible. Lejoie has an arb case tho.

It’s very up in the air if Gardiner is eligible for a buyout though. Lot of semantics around timing of his clearance and whether that included a physical by team doctors. Waddell insinuated that they could buy him out earlier this week but also said they thought they could make the cap work without buying anybody out so we’ll see how it actually plays out.

No, he wasn’t eligible. I’d imagine they do buyout gardiner as early as they possibly can however. He is over the $4m caphit to qualify for the buyout window when it opens up again. It really shouldn’t be a big deal imo because you are allowed to go over the cap in the off-season by 10% if I am correct and even if necas is signed and gards is off LTIR, they’re under that cap hit. Worst case scenario, they miss the buyout window and send gardiner down to the AHL or they run a 20 man roster which isn’t a big deal at all because they would actually fit under the cap with gardiner and necas at his reported cap hit by the Czech media. Say an injury does happen that isn’t an LTIR injury, they can play a game with 19 players and then get the emergency call up. I don’t know the penalty for that off the top of my head, but I believe it is less than going over the cap. There are options for the canes and it’s nice because it’s tight but not so tight that it’s uncomfortable.