There are a limited number of ways that a team is able to get out of a contract given to one of their players. One such way is to buy out the contract, which relieves of the team of their contractual obligation to the player, but does still result in “dead cap space” which is essentially cap space being used on a player that isn’t with the club. Typically, a team would exercise a buy out in order to get out of a bad contract in order to see some cap relief, much like the New York Islanders with Alexei …
