Buying Out Wade Redden: The Cap Hits
With the Rangers in dire salary cap straits, the need to alleviate pressure on the cap grows everyday. The biggest cry amongst fans has been to buyout Wade Redden, who's $6.5 million cap hit for the next four seasons is, to put it mildly, atrocious. The thought of buying out Redden is appealing, until you see what it would cost to buy him out. Per CapGeek, it is pricey, and lengthy:
| Season | Salary | Buyout | Savings | Buyout Cap Hit |
| 2010-2011 | $6,500,000 | $1,916,667 | $4,583,333 | $1,916,667 |
| 2011-2012 | $6,500,000 | $1,916,667 | $4,583,333 | $1,916,667 |
| 2012-2013 | $6,500,000 | $1,916,667 | $3,083,333 | $3,416,667 |
| 2013-2014 | $6,500,000 | $1,916,667 | $3,083,333 | $3,416,667 |
| 2014-2015 | $0 | $1,916,667 | $-1,916,667 | $1,916,667 |
| 2015-2016 | $0 | $1,916,667 | $-1,916,667 | $1,916,667 |
| 2016-2017 | $0 | $1,916,667 | $-1,916,667 | $1,916,667 |
| 2017-2018 | $0 | $1,916,667 | $-1,916,667 | $1,916,667 |
So if the Rangers were to buyout Redden, they would be paying him until the end of the 2017-2018 season. That's a full eight seasons of Wade Redden, as opposed to the four remaining. The buyout of Redden may not seem like much, but paying $2 million for someone that's not on the team for the next eight years isn't exactly ideal. Also, because of the structure of Redden's contract, that $2 million becomes $3.4 million for two seasons.
From a business standpoint and from a hockey operations standpoint, buying out Redden simply does not work because it is just too expensive. The only option that makes sense from a hockey operations sense is to demote Redden, but that is unlikely to happen due to varying reasons, especially when there may have been pressure to play him. The Rangers desperately need salary cap space, but it looks like it may have to come from another method.
