Clarkson must be the plan to sign Marner

Read this
https://twitter.com/EarlSchwartz27/status/1153799226175848454

This trade is ridiculous for both teams. For TML why take this contract.... Before you have $5M of cap space and $5.3 of LTIR (Horton). After the trade you have $0 cap space and $10.3 of LTIR. TML pays the Clakson contract (the last year) only to get a 4th round pick ?? and giving their third Goalie. Vegas getting a backup goalie and don't get cap relief because of Clarkson LTIR contract. I truly don't understand what is the impact on the Marner contract.

That's not how LTIR works. In that scenario, they would only be able to spend $300,000 over the cap. When a player goes on LTIR, you don't get to spend the equivalent of their entire salary over the cap limit unless you were already at the limit. Whatever space you have under the limit before LTIR, has to be used up before going over the ceiling.

Exactly. Seriously @Bigphil read this. It explains the whole thing.

Huh. This seems like a bit of a stroke of genius.

With Clarkson in place Marner loses a bit of leverage, no? I mean, before the trade Marner could kinda push the leafs to sign him at his number before camp or threatened to hold out, which would create an inflated cap hit ala Nylander.. which is something the leafs couldn't handle before this trade.

But now they can LTIR 10.5M to cover the impact if Marner holds out for a period of time. If I'm getting this right the leafs seem to be covering their butts in a way they can handle a hold out tactic.

Am I on track here?