Anaheim is 17th in the league for GAA. Last five SC winners were ranked 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, and 6th for GAA in the league. They also have capspace and a wealth of young talent to move in trades.
I could see them being interested in Phaneuf. I dont even mind retaining salary, as long as it gets us a good return. The gap between the capfloor and capceiling is like 13M or so right now? Thats only going to get larger, so if we're retaining 1M on Phaneuf, we'd still be able to spend more against the cap than 80-90% of the teams in the league.
And if we're rebuilding, we should have plenty of capspace anyways for 4-5+ years, as guys start playing through their ELC/RFA contracts. We should be retaining salary and/or taking back bad capdumps as much as possible if it makes a big difference in the trade returns. Because ultimately this team for the next 5-15 years is going to be impacted more by those trade returns, than it will be by taking back a capdump for 2-4 years, or retaining ~1M in salary for 5-6 years.