2017 off-season moves

having 9,500,000 tied up in goalies is just a bad idea and the Hawks can't afford to pay 1,500,000 for Niemi.

Dallas definitely needs to try their best to move one or both of Niemi and Lehtonen but I don't think it will be as easy as you've purposed here. If GMs could just ship out underperforming veterans on multimillion dollar contracts for a couple draft picks my Red Wings wouldn't be in any trouble...but here we are...

CHI can not afford Niemi no matter how much DAL retains; they will find a cheaper backup to Crawford somewhere else or promote from within.

While CGY desperately needs a goaltending solution, they can do much better than Lehtonen at an almost $6 million cap hit. Both Johnson and Elliot out performed Lehtonen this past year and will be much cheaper should they decide to resign either of them. I think CGY most likely resign Johnson for around $2 million and find another option somewhere else or promote from within; they have several intriguing goalie prospects. I think a Johnson/Rittich tandem would be respectable and quite cheap.

If DAL needs to move a goalie for cap reasons my bet is on one of Niemi or Lehtonen being bought out and DAL just eating the other one. I don't think Niemi has any trade value whatsoever, even with retention of salary. Lehtonen might return something if DAL is willing to eat a large part of the cap hit.

Dallas can't retain $3 million on Niemi, Niemi makes $4.5 million so at 50% that only $2.25 million that they can retain. You can't retain more then 50% of any ones contract.

Oshie can, and will, command $6 million easily. No way he settles for less than that, unless with Washington