Matthews

If this goes through you can assume that Arizona picks in the middle to the bottom of round 1 for those years with Matthews, they have a ton of young talent coming up that they are able to empty the cupboard in terms of picks without falling to far behind in the system. Where they may run into problems is having to pay all their RFA's, Galchenyuk and Rantaa within those 7 years. Personally I just wanna see an offer sheet!!

Well this team is still about 7m over budget.

The reason this is not worth it for Arizona is mathews at 15m is about 22% of their budget. Teams will know exactly how to defend them. Shut down Matthews and it’s game over. I would still think those picks are very high in the draft, possibly all top 15. Since Arizona declined Kessel because they could not afford him I doubt they she’ll out 15m on mathews.

you don't even need to offer that much according to most toronto fans Matthews is a "fair" contract at 11 million

Budgets change for a player like Matthews, no one is going to convince an owner of a team that a 31 year old lazy pure shooter is going to come in and turn a season or franchise around. Of course they decline that. Matthews makes them more money than his contract is worth, Matthews coming back to Phoenix gives them something to finally market around, not just the team but the entire city, I don't know how you try build a profitable team with Ekman-Larsson being the poster boy he is an incredible hockey player and a great ambassador but that would be like trying to sell how exciting Sean Monahan is to people in the desert.

Mathews was already in arizona... place was empty but for a few leafs fans... and no budgets don’t change when they are the max. Kessel was less than half this money and they had to pass. Just not a likely candidate to overpay a player in an offersheet. Maybe a trade later in his career. Could be good for the Yotes.

To bring in mathews you need to clear out 15m in players. With no first rounders for the next four years yotes aren’t going to have those good cheap elc’s they need to fill out the roster. Arizona would more than likely be worse off and Toronto maybe better as none of those picks can be protected.