True, but his budget for hockey players is a hard $81,500,000. So 4.7 % of your hockey player budget for pick 20-25.
Claude Giroux was a pick from 20-25. As was Burns, Kesler, Richards, Boeser, Konecny, Rask, Oshie and many others.
I mean, if it was the last 4.7% of the hockey player budget that I had available, and wanted to do other things with it, then yeah, it wouldn't be a slam dunk. But you said that cap space was "ample". And it's not like it's going to haunt you years down the line. We're talking about a 1 year deal.
Example:
If I was looking at $8M in cap space, and really thought that I could get a guy like Pavelski for $7M, then I wouldn't do it.
If I was looking at $25M in cap space, then going from $25M to $19M doesn't seem like it's going to affect anything that I would like to do, so I take the asset 100 times out of 100.