The 21/22 season is the important one because we need to re-sign Petey and Hughes for that season. If we buy out Eriksson this summer, we get negligible savings in 20/21 (but we carry at least 13 forwards on the roster anyway, so in a way we're already carrying his replacement on the books) but we save 2.33M in 21/22. Then we take an almost negligible hit in 22/23 and 23/24 (when hopefully the cap is rising again)
Compare this to buying Eriksson out next summer.
SEASON
INITIAL BASE SALARY
INITIAL CAP HIT
SIGNING BONUS
BUYOUT COST
POST-BUYOUT EARNINGS
SAVINGS
CAP HIT (VAN)
2021-22
$3,000,000
$6,000,000
$1,000,000
$1,000,000
$2,000,000
$2,000,000
$4,000,000
2022-23
$0
$0
$0
$1,000,000
$1,000,000
-$1,000,000
$1,000,000
TOTAL
$3,000,000
$6,000,000
$1,000,000
$2,000,000
$3,000,000
$1,000,000
$5,000,000
We have the full 6M on the books for 20/21 (which is worse than 5.7M). Then we only save 2M (rather than 2.3M) in the important 21/22 season. and an extra hit of 1M (worse than 600K)
Buying him out this offseason (September?) seems to makes the most sense from a savings perspective without needing to give up an asset (short of Loui just retiring and removing the entire 6M).