Dear everybody trading for Laine

what if the offer included taking some dead weight contract/

You seem to fail to understand that Laine is only available in a trade if he can't be re-signed by WPG i.e. he doesn't want to play for you and/or he's too expensive and you can't get him under cap. In both cases, Laine's value drops. If WPG wants Laine, Laine wants to play in WPG and WPG can get him under the cap, there is no deal to be had. All the proposed trades for Laine are assuming the former i.e. Laine is available.

For Columbus or Montreal to trade for Laine, with cap space to match most offers, but without any reason to believe he's worth 12M if the other somehow offer sheets him to that, the offer sheet compensation of four first round picks is the maximum they should consider trading for an un-signed Laine, because that could be all they end up with if they can't sign him before some other team offersheets him.

For teams without extra cap space, the most they should trade is the compensation for the lowest offer sheet they can't match. For instance, a Winnipeg fan commented the other day that they'd trade Laine for John Carlson. I laughed it off at first. Tonight I tried to build a Caps team to see if/how that could work for Washington. I was able to clear cap space to offer Laine an 8M AAV. If an offersheet comes in at 9M, then, I'd have to either make more trades at a loss, to match, or take two 1sts, a 2nd, and a 3rd, and call that a good enough return for seven years of John Carlson, who could fetch that as a rental.

RFA might seem pretty cool to Winnipeg, when they imagine getting four first picks from a struggling team for a guy they don't even really need, since Connor is good enough at 1L, but trading for an RFA can be a real liability in a summer that has reportedly seen two pretty big offersheets written, already. Does that make sense? Might have to work out an NBA-style sign-and-trade to move Laine to some teams. I know they don't typically happen in the NHL, but neither did offer sheets until pretty recently. Things change, even in hockey.

Honestly shouldn't make it that much less. If the Jets trade Laine they won't likely need the space anyway.

Even if he doesn't want to play, the Jets wouldn't have to trade him since they'd still own his rights. Plus if we played our cards right we should still be able to get a bridge done closer to the November deadline. Then you try to convince him to stay long term, and if that doesn't work you start listening to offers. He's still four years away from UFA. There's no need to rush.