TJ isn't the player he used to be and yes, they're going to need to eat it a little in a trade to get rid of him, but he's still easily good enough to play every night. Burying him and still taking the dead money hit is just bad cap management. The same could be said about McElhinney, why bury him and have dead money, when he's still good enough to be the backup?

Burying it and having him for he end of he year playoff run is better than giving him and a pick away. Then come expansion draft you convince Seattle to bring him home keeping rest of team in tact

They don't have to do either with Kucherov on LTIR. Just play him this season and deal him in the off season.

Yeah but to do that they would have to expose pocket and he can get claim possibly where they don’t have to expose Johnson waivers because he’s already cleared waivers and being on the taxi squad he can practice with the team all the time so that means you’ll have all that practice time his body won’t be physically beat up and when there’s no salary cap in the playoffs Kucherov and Johnson are now all of a sudden coming in completely fresh by like the 10 game mark the amount of salary added would be irrelevant

No, they don't have to expose anyone. The dead money from TJ alone covers Pacquette. Your numbers are off.

https://www.capfriendly.com/armchair-gm/team/2148636

This is where you are going to run into a slight problem with Seattle. Protection and them taking Johnson. If the rules are the same as Vegas and I believe they are, you can protect 7F/3D/1G or 8S/1G and that leaves you a problem. If you want to protect all of Hedman/Sergachev/Cernak and Foote (Yes, Foote will have to be protected) you can only protect 4 forwards Stamkos/Kucherov have to be protected, you would think other two would be Point/Cirelli. That leaves good young players like Barré-Boulet or Volkov open, the draft is not going to help you, it will hurt. And Tampa is one of the few teams where good younger players will be readily available from so they are going to ask for a premium to pass on that. They dont need to take on Johnson's contract to get a good young players from Tampa they simply have to chose the young player freeing them to take a bad contract from another team for a player/prospect/picks that they want.

Its either this year or next year you are going to have trade value to get out of some of those contracts. It could go either way, Johnson/Killorn/Gourde could all have great and maybe lower the cost of moving one or two of them (or positive value for them), or they can have bad years and increase the cost to move them.

I just can not see Seattle letting the one one team they have over the barrel off without some massive upside for them.

Nobody thought VGK was going to take Jason Garrison but the lightning pop the second and fourth and seventh round draft pick they had taken Nikita Gusev . Think that’ll be a pretty doable trade especially since Johnson’s from Seattle is a Stanley Cup champion he still not a slug he’s not a player he was back in 15 but he still a very good third line center we got Stanley cup experience he’s from the area can help promote it like Wade Boggs with the Tampa Bay Devil rays back in the day

Jason Garrison had one season left at 4.6 cap hit, not 5mil for 3 years. It cost a 2nd a 4th and a top prospect to take 1 year of 4.6. Yes Johnson has more value then Garrison but not at that term (as shown by going unclaimed on waivers) . If the another teams offer something to take on cap, something that a lot of teams might need to do, it could very well cost more than that to have them take Johnson. What you are saying is possible but I would not count on Seattle bailing you out of this. Also with possibility of no cap increases over the next several year could make Seattle leery of taking on the term (which is why I believe the Red Wings haven't taken him on)

The point is you are going to have to trade someone at some point to get cap compliant this year or next and Seattle and every team out there knows it.