Quoting: CHUG
I see what you're saying, my entire point though was that there would be enough room to resign him
I've done a construction based upon the simpler premise that Hall just signs in Pittsburgh as a free agent for $78MM ($11,142,857 x 7). Here's what that would require:
1. buying out Johnson (no problem)
2. trading Gudbranson (probably do-able)
3. trading one of Bjugstad or Rust (possible)
4. re-signing Murray at $6.5MM or less (possible)
5. re-signing Pettersson for less than $4MM (possible)
6. re-signing Kahun and Simon for an aggregate of $3MM or less (quite possible)
7. letting Galchenyuk and McCann walk (is Hall > Galchenyuk and McCann?)
8. letting Schultz walk (apparently, a foregone conclusion)
As you can see, although most if not all of the steps are within reason, it still would take a lot of things to fall into place to do this comfortably.