swap Johnsson for Kapanen, take out the VGK 4th and NJ accepts

Not to mention NJD are not going to retain 1/2 the salary either, you almost never see that for a player that has 1) multiple years left 2) is not grossly overpaid. These armchair GM's on here that keep proposing these huge salary retention moves by the team they are acquiring from, don't seem to understand this principle.

Lol I did a Severson one with 25% retained. NJ has the most cap space in the league and could definitely survive retaining 1mil for a few years, 2mil seems a bit much but still doable. I see what you're saying but 3 years isn't the end of the world, if it was like 4+ then yeah no chance.

I take that and run if I'm New Jersey.

It's just that you rarely see this types of deals if ever. Retention is generally reserved for a player that is overpaid or on a short term agreement (1 maybe 2 years). Severson is for sure fairly paid and has 3 years left; NJD has no reason to eat $2M cap or even $1M. The only scenario, and it's rare, is they would do that theoretically if they are acquiring a player that has substantially more value then the player they are trading away, but in this case Kap has less value so this just doesn't make sense.