Creating space under the salary cap has quickly become the name of the game in NHL roster management. Over the last five years the salary cap has barely increased, but teams have continued to hand out big money to the players. Unlike other leagues such as the NFL, there are not many ways in the NHL to make a bad contract disappear. They have once-a-year buyout windows (which leave a fairly significant cap penalty) but otherwise hockey teams can’t generally count on cutting money from the guaranteed contracts that they hand out to players.
Unless they trade those contracts to another team that is willing to take them on.