I would never say never. If players can retire due to rashes from their hockey equipment and so on... who knows what they might come up with. And they certainly have several very expendable contracts that they would like to see evaporated (Eriksson, Sutter, Bartschi, etc). So far Tampa can't find takers for players who are still good NHL players, though. So moving true dump contracts must be an even taller order.
Hoffman must have some pretty good assurances, though. He must think they have a way. They must have said something about their intentions. So they must think they might have a way. I mean, you wouldn't sit and wait based on the strength of just looking at their roster on CapFriendly and wondering how they make room, right? That'd be a good way to just totally miss out, and surely no NHL agent would take that chance without some specifics provided.