Edited Jul. 3, 2020 at 1:04 a.m.
Quoting: OldNYIfan
Now let's talk about retention. As intimated by
@Nighthawk , I don't think that you understand how retention works.
Retention means a team pays the player an amount in actual cash equal to that cap hit.
This is not how retention works. The salary retained is also determined from the percentage used to determine the cap hit retained.
From Puckpedia
https://puckpedia.com/salary-cap/retained-salary
When teams trade a player, they can retain, or keep, some of the players' salary and cap hit. The team keeps a % of both the cap hit and salary for the remainder of the contract.
Therefore, if a Player with a Salary of $2.0M and a Cap Hit/AAV of $3.0M is traded with 20% retention, the trading team would continue to pay 20% of the $2.0M Salary and would continue to have a cap hit of 20% of the $3.0M Cap Hit.
All the numbers used in the Armchair Gm calculator are based on cap hits. For Eriksson, 50% retention of $6M cap hit is $3M. The same 50% applies to the salary remaining, which as of yesterday with Eriksson receiving his $3M signing bonus, has $5M total salary remaining - 50% of it is $2.5M.
Quoting: OldNYIfan
As Nighthawk says, Vancouver would be paying the $3 million bonus plus $6 million in compensation, i.e., $1 million more than Eriksson is owed.
If this were really the case - which it is not, then Eriksson's agent would be demanding a trade out of Vancouver as Eriksson would be eligible to receive more than what he is contractually owed.
Quoting: OldNYIfan
Cash is not a consideration at all for Anaheim, one of the most well-run franchises in the League. Just as an example, due to differences between cap hits and contracts (all downward), our actual payroll next year will be at least $10 million less than our cap total. This why we traded for Backes last year and could well trade for Eriksson this year -- just not on those terms. If we we're to do so, I think that it would be in a structure mimicking the Backes deal -- say, Jacob Larsson for Eriksson, Vancouver's 2021 first and Jett Woo.
The fact that actual payroll is lower than cap total is precisely why I believe cash could be a consideration. It shows that the team places high value on efficiency, and prefers player contracts where salary owed in a given year is less than the cap hit. Also with revenues drying up because of COVID, teams will be looking at different ways to save cash.