Quoting: coga16
you are misreading the rule...why would they have a rule of that a team cant retain salary on a player trading him away just to reacquire him having the full cap hit once again.
The rule is exactly this, you cant reacquire said player with retained salary to circumvent the CBA. The way you are laying out, you arent circumvent the cap bc Leafs would be retaining salary, then getting him back, making up his full cap hit once again
The way you're saying it is not the wording of it and in legal terms, lawyers always argue in terms of the way it's written exactly.
The way the user has this post:
Move Zaitsev to a team who needs picks and to hit the cap floor (OTT) and have them trade him back with 50% of his salary retained. It'd technically be two separate trades.
So Toronto isn't retaining cap on Zaitsev at all and moving him to another team in the first trade, Zaitsev is immediately deemed legal to be traded to any team in the league with salary retention by Ottawa (including Toronto). Then Ottawa has chosen to flip Zaitsev back to Toronto at 50% salary retained which is legal because Toronto didn't retain salary in the original transaction. That's exactly how lawyers would fight it for its legality because the way it is worded, makes it legal circumvention. If it happened, I'm sure the league would address it but by the way the rule is written out in this section, it makes it legal.
This section also has a little bit to do with why the Orpik situation was legal circumvention. Because his contract was terminated after the trade, it's legally allowed to sign with any team at any amount of money and there's nothing the league coulda done about it except not be happy. But it's all still legal.
I'm sure the CBA was drafted that way by the league because it never crossed their mind that a situation like it would happen, but if it does you can be sure they'll address it in the next CBA talks. But the way this section has it written out, yes it is legal.