Not trading a 2nd for a bottom-6 player.

$67 in cap space

Is Benn really that bad? He had a bad season last year, but looking at his stats over the past couple of years, he seems like a totally serviceable 3rd pairing defender. Is it just a bad fit in VAN? Also, I don't understand the pick swap in this trade, but considering how Benn would be a cap dump, I don't see NSH adding a pick to the deal - more likely VAN would have to though.

edit: also, if Schneider is just put on LTIR then why would NJD consider that trade?

I don't think Benn is that bad; he is a serviceable 3rd pairing defender and is likely just a bad fit in VAN. He plays better on his off side however, he primarily played on the left side in VAN which gave rise to a bad year. When Myers went down during the playoffs Benn played on the right side and was much better. I wanted to be prudent so I treated Benn as somewhat of a cap dump in the trade.

Benn is older and has a 2M cap hit while Santini is younger and has a 1.4M cap hit. Benn is owed 50K less than Santini in actual $$$ and likely carries more value than Santini since he has cleared waivers in the past and is not as established as Benn; thus there is a minor draft pick swap where VAN moves up 9 slots in the 6th round.

I put Schneider on LTIR because when I bought him out VAN received the full 2M cap hit for the buyout despite NJD retaining 25%. If I'm not mistaken NJD would assume 25% of the buyout so 500K. I created the buyout as a player so it shows up correctly against the cap for VAN at 1.5M x 4 years.

Could give that to MacEwen too and spend all 81.5M!

A late 2nd + a 4th seems like fair value for Virtanen. If the Bruins don't give it I'm sure someone else will.