Quoting: Ryminister_27
🤦🏻♂️
What you don't see is that the Leafs already replaced Johnsson with guys like Vesey, Thornton, Simmonds, Barabanov, etc. Guys that they already signed and a trade of Johnsson wouldn't have affected that.
Jesus. You make my brain hurt. Sorry, I'm done with this conversation now.
Here, math isn't your strong point so I'll make a visualization for you:
Here are the Leafs lines.
Thornton - Matthews - Marner
Johnsson - Tavares - Nylander
Mikehyev - Kerfoot - Hyman
Simmonds - Spezza - Barabanov
Rielly - Brodie
Muzzin - Holl
Dermott - Bogosian
Vesey (we'll call Vesey the 21st man since you seem to think him being acquired already somehow matters)
Now the Leafs trade Johnsson and Dermott for Weegar, their caps balancing out:
Thornton - Matthews - Marner
[replacement] - Tavares - Nylander
Mikehyev - Kerfoot - Hyman
Simmonds - Spezza - Barabanov
Rielly - Brodie
Muzzin - Holl
Weegar - Bogosian
Vesey
You see, it doesn't matter that Vesey was already acquired. You still have that hole you have to fill. If you use Vesey to do it, you just don't have a 21st man. You could be arguing to do that but playing with only a 20 man roster isn't a risk NHL teams take and the Leafs would have lost Dell by now to do it. It still costs the at minimum $700,000 to replace Johnsson with another skater whether that skater was already acquired or not. Thats the cost you are trying to say doesn't exist.