Flyers announce the first buyout of the offseason.

The National Hockey League's first buyout window of the offseason has officially opened up and will remain open until the end of the month, and that means that several NHL players are about to unexpectedly find themselves on the free agent market. Now the buyout window opening up does not necessarily mean that players will be bought out, however with general manager's often competing against themselves to sign players there are always bad contracts all across the National Hockey League.

We did not have to wait long to find out who the first player to be the target of such a buyout would be, as the Philadelphia Flyers have officially announced that they intend to part ways with one of their veterans today. According to an official announcement from the Flyers organization, the team has placed veteran defenseman Andrew MacDonald on unconditional waivers for the purpose of buying out his contract once he clears that process. The move comes as very little surprise as MacDonald has been the subject of buyout rumors for quite some time now, and perhaps even more importantly has become a whipping boy or scapegoat for a Flyers' fan base that has long since run out of patience with him.

MacDonald has been a sore point for the flyers fan base for some time now and in spute of spending the last 6 years of his career in Philadelphia he has never played in a full NHL season for the organization. In fact over the course of his 586 NHL game career MacDonald has surprisingly failed to complete a full 82 game regular season even a single time. His most recent campaign with the Philadelphia Flyers resulted in just 47 appearances for MacDonald and his numbers over that stretch were not impressive. Over the entire 2018 - 2019 NHL season MacDonald would record no goals and only 9 assists for a total of 9 points, and he would add 18 penalty minutes to those totals finishing the season with a plus minus rating of -5 on the year.

The 32 year old will become an unrestricted free agent once the buyout comes into effect, but it is hard to imagine that there will be a ton of suitors for his services come the offseason. That being said the main reason for this buyout is the fact that MacDonald is still counts for $5 million against the cap, far too high a price tag for a part time defenseman, and perhaps a significant cut in his salary will be enough to convince an NHL team to bring him in as a depth option on the blue line.