I'm not exactly sure the draft pick value of $4M retained over 4 years is, but I'm fairly certain that it's going to be significantly more than a 3rd and a 7th. Has anyone done calculations for this sort of thing?

Gonna need A LOT more than that to retain 4mil for 4 years.

That’s not a good deal for SJ or TOR in my opinion.

Pretend you’re the ducks and look at the trade you suggested. Tell me how you feel about it now

Some people just don’t have it going on upstairs man. How does anyone think that you can get millions of dollars over multiple years for just a 3rd and a 7th 😂

So Pat Verbeek is eating $16,000,000 on Erik Karlsson for a lousy 3rd and 7th round pick. You can't be serious? It would cost you at least multiple 1st round picks to each that much cap.

Pat doesn't want to pay anyone anything so needs to get to the cap floor. Sure I'm open to a counteroffer

Two firsts for that much retention when the ducks have no need to do it. They’re about to get well above the cap floor just by signing their RFAs and will continue spending money over the next 4 years as their rebuild progresses.

I could see adding 1 1st, beyond that no.

Right, so they probably wouldn’t do it. I understand why you wouldn’t want to but have to look at their perspective too.

The question of how much it costs to dump salary made me look for comparables.

One relevant trade I found was when Marleau was traded from Toronto to Carolina before the 2019 season. He was subsequently bought out by Carolina.

To get rid of Marleau's 6.25M cap hit for 1 year, it cost a 1st and a 7th. So for any team to retain $4Mx4 (16M total), I think the equivalent value is ~2.5 1st round picks.