Team: 2020-21 New York Islanders

Initial Creation Date: Jul. 4, 2020

Published: Jul. 5, 2020

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I’ll start off by saying it’s impossible to know which 8 teams Boychuk will have on his trade list. I have Dallas there because they should be competitive for the next two seasons, have cap space this offseason and I don’t think Texas has income tax, so that’s appealing I guess.

The Islanders have no incentive to trade Boychuk’s full contract, as only trading half of it allows them to fit the team under the cap next season and there’s no reason to give up an insane amount of future assets if they don’t have to. Who/what they would add to his trade, I don’t know. I have Bellows and the Kings’ 3rd here because Bellows still looks like he’s going to be a solid middle six winger and the pick should be in the mid-60s of the draft, barring any major improvement by the Kings. I don’t think that’s unreasonable for taking on two years of a $3 MM bottom pairing defenseman, especially when Dallas in particular doesn’t have the best collection of righties.

I don’t know if this is enough, but for the Islanders, something similar to this could be just as helpful as moving his whole cap hit, without having to give up as many future assets.

This trade also allows for the Islanders to start the season with Ladd on the roster and creates space for a standard contract for Ilya Sorokin, two things that are possibilities I haven’t accounted for in the past ACGMs in large part because I haven’t been able to. It’s a tight fit, but it fits.

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