Arizona laughs at your offer and hangs up the phone.

Just as well -- my understanding is that a team can only retain salary on two players, and Arizona is already retaining part of Mike Smith's salary.

Faced with cap ceiling problems, why would McPhee trade away Merrill? He's close to the cheapest player on the roster, and reasonably effective as a third-pairing defenseman.

Even though DeMelo's current contract has only one more year to run, I think Ottawa will hold on to him, at least until the trade deadline in 2020, in the hope that they can re-sign him.

McElhinney has won more than a dozen games for Carolina this year, so I think he's going to command a lot more than $925,000.

No the rule is 3 players: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHL_salary_cap

Thanks for the correction!