Looking at this, It looks like 3.5 million plus the salary of the guy being pushed out to get a partner for Reilly or if we have to take a salary to move Zaitsev.

Unless Marner is traded or "sits" there has to money for Marner. Sure don't want to go into October with Liljegren and Holl in the top six. Maybe it's Zaitsev stays means an expensive forward is traded.

The leafs wont have to take any cap back for Brown. Once Free Agency finishes and some teams don’t get the depth forward they were looking for I think they would give up a 3rd (Hopefully) for Brown. Zaitsev would likely be in the same situation but after seeing how much the return for subban was and how much the leafs needed to give up to dump Marleau…. Its going to be a lot harder to move him than originally thought.

The problem the leafs face is they can’t improve the blue line!!! They have to be able to get their shots on goal down.. they don’t have any flexibility to do that without moving a big contract or multiples... Dubas will get forced to trade for little value or give up more then he can... hence a first round pick in the Marleau trade.. GMs know Toronto has a problem and will deal with Toronto knowing they have few options.

The assumption is that Zaitsev is gone. Now that Kappy and johnsson are signed ( total 400k less than in this projection) that leave about 4.75 mil to seek a right shot defence man (3.9 plus 850k for Liljgren) . If the Oilers want both Zaitsev and Brown, Brown could be the cost to move Zaitsev, and if they see a right shot defenceman being pushed out, the Leafs could take the player off their hands.

Based on the new information on Kappy and Johnsson, they have 3.9 mil if they have to take back a contract, Perhaps a little more if the player can replace one of the 23 skaters on the list above.

I'm willing to roll the dice on that lineup if we can't get reasonable value for any player listed above. Assuming that Zaitsev can be offloaded without taking back a salary, that's 4.75 mil to go for a capable right shot d-man. No call would be accepted on one of our forwards above that does not START with a right shot D and add from there.