I love the fact that some posters and journalists are just now coming around to the idea that Sens moves are money motivated because of Zach Smith.
Umm, the moment EK went in the trade block the evidence was crystal clear. No other team in the NHL would have seriously considered getting rid of Karlsson.
Bah... it's been a while, it started slowly...
When we went through a partial rebuild in 2011, Murray traded several veterans WITHOUT taking any salary back (although it's understandable when you rebuild). Returns could have been different if you accommodate those teams with their salary cap situations. Ex : could have gotten a young players instead of picks.
in 2014, spent an additional 5th round pick to get retained salary on Hemsky, even though the Sens had plenty of cap space. That was the first sign of what would happen.
Trading Spezza and only getting Chiasson's salary ($900,000) back. Could potentially have had a different return if they took a veteran with salary left to be paid.
Lehner deal, could have gotten another asset on top of the 1st if we didn't have to make the Sabres take on Legwand last year salary ($3,500,000)
A 2nd round pick added to Zibanejad to avoid paying Brassard's bonus, so he would come even cheaper (10.0 salary for 3 years)
The Phaneuf deals. Complicated deals to make it work financially.
Hoffman for Boedker. MB is more attractive to a team like Ottawa because even though is cap hit is 4.0, his salary is only 3.0 for the next 2 years, and they expect 35-50 pts from him. Dollar per point baby. Even though Hoff's value was destroyed, probably could have gotten a better return if we were willing to take salary back.
Basically, Ryan is the last deal we've made that we were "let's not worry about finances, let's go for it!"
Even the Duchene deal wad dollar in dollar out with Turris going the other way.
Finally EK, Tierney is attractive for the Sens with a salary under 3.0 for the next 2 years, another guy they probably expect to put between 35 and 50 pts per season. DeMelo is also cheap... but seriously if they didn't take Braun back because he is more expensive, it's infuriating. The deal would be more acceptable with Braun instead of DeMelo, a solid top-4 D IMO.
Just on top of my head. The cap has been rising fast the last few years and it got Melnyk really concerned about the money in/money out stuff. 64.3 M$ in 2013-14 and almost 80 M$ 5 years later. Melnyk just couldn't (and/or didn't want to) follow the 15 M$ raise in such a short time span, that we like it or not.
Sure, he still makes money with other venues, but it's easy for him to see the hockey team and the arena venues as different entities, unfortunately for us.
