Creating an asset out of nothing

I’m so lost here. Arizona is retaining the money, gets paid by Vegas to do so, and the Islanders get paid a 2nd for…. Nothing? I don’t see how that works at all

So this is how it would go. Vegas is looking to dump dadonov to create cap. Simple cap dump here, isles take dadonov and in exchange also receive a 3rd round pick. Now the isles dont necessarily want dadonov but they have the cap to keep him if need be. Free agency comes and goes and either (in this case WSH) missed out on their guy or they were looking for a middle 6 scoring winger at a cheap cap hit. So the isles offer dadonov 50% retained in exchange for an asset (i think a 2nd is about the right price). But NYI wants their cap space so they pay arizona a 3rd round pick to retain 2.5m for 1 year.
Now why couldnt vegas go directly to ARI technically they couldve. In this case the caps werent yet looking for dadonov as they wanted to explore FA first. Maybe ARI didnt want the full cap hit, or maybe they were trying to squeeze vegas for extra value. There will probably be a few teams that would be willing to take a dadonov cap dump. In my acgm i have the isles being the team that gets the cap dump. When you look at everything as a total the isles basically get a free pick (hence the name of the acgm) but if you go through it piece by pice is there any trade that isnt pretty fair value? If the answer is no then by default the process makes sense.
I could go through another whole post as to why its possible to do this here when basically everywhere else it isnt if you want.

I mean if a team would do that, I don’t see why not lol. 2.5 mil retained sadly does cost the 2nd rounder however instead of a 3rd, tho ig if it’s an earlier 3rd maybe. The value makes sense, it’s just so weird to possibly think of it happening yk

How does 2.5 cost a 2nd when ~1.5 costs a 4th. And 5.5 costs a 2nd?
Yeah it is really weird bc this is a unique case. Dadonov has positive value (especially retained) but vegas will have to pay to move him. In a usual case with a cap strapped team they wont get good value, but if a player has positive value they still have positive value even if its less. Here dadonov becomes a negative asset while on vegas. Thats why its possible to pull it over here.

It depends on how you view it. This 2.5 mil is also over the course of an entire season, whereas the 1.2.5-1.5 mil trades are a 4th for the money saved at only the deadline and on