Quoting: BigBadBurke
Guess you haven't been following the nhl very long. UFA and RFA signings are always extremely different. You should educate yourself on them before trying to sound like a know-it-all.
And besides, hoffmans contract is for 2yrs at 4.5m... which is the exact same as Ghostisbeheres when he was traded to ARZ along with a 2nd & 7th rounder. Not to mention both he and Ghost were both pro-rated to put up ~42pts over an 82game pace. So yes, it is actually very likely hoffman gets moved for similar assets in a cap dump trade to a basement dwelling team.
Thanks for the response sir.
Rem Pitlick was a UFA... since he was not qualified. He was available on the market and signed for peanuts.
Kessel, Statsny, Niederreiter, Rodrigues, Milano are 5 current unsigned UFAs who are all better than Hoffman and can be had cheaper.
You are not wrong about the precedent trades, but this offseason is an example of unprecedented times. Cap space is more valuable than assets who are not stars.