ding ding ding.
Coming from an Ottawa fan.
Tampa says no
Imagine trading a proven 50 point Drouin for an unproven Sergachev.
It doesn't mean anything that Brannstrom and Brown aren't full time NHLers. They are still young guys with a bunch of talent. If they would be proven they would be looking for a payday just like Cirelli is and Tampa would consequently not even be able to acquire them because they are well over the cap. Not only that, but if Ottawa had a proven player making minimal salary they wouldn't trade him. Cirelli was at one point unproven as well. Teams make trades for unproven players all the time. Even Ottawa traded Mark Stone, Erik Karlsson, Mike Hoffman, Ryan Dzingel and Matt Duchene for what was/is mostly all question marks. Question marks with a lot of talent and potential to be impact NHLers though. Make no mistake, no one is trading their proven player on a ELC contract to Tampa just to help them out with their cap situation. Finding proven impact players on ELC (or low salary) is pretty much impossible via trade and if you can the price is astronomical even in a normal and stable financial situation.
Tampa has no cap space. They will have to trade players for picks or prospects whether that is Killorn, Johnson, Palat, Cirelli or whoever they want. It's not a choice at this point, it's just the only way any deal with them can work really. They can't take on any salary, so they need picks and prospects to keep replacing these Killorn/Johnson/Palat type players they won't be able to retain in future years..
Brannstrom and L.Brown are two very very good prospects on the cusp of making their full-time jump to the NHL, probably in 2 weeks. Maybe they would prefer different prospects and that's fine but the value is there. I still think Tampa figures out a way to keep Cirelli by trading other guys and adding incentives though.
Of course all of this is said assuming they don't put Kuch/Stamkos on LTIR.