There has to be a reason for the trade partner to want the player you’re offering. Andreas Johnson has a poorly structured contract, with high signing bonuses each year, and lower salary. This requires early balloon payments, which many team owners avoid. Toronto is a rich team and can afford to give those stipulations, but then they become more difficult to trade. Doesn’t mean they can’t be traded, just not to cash poor teams like the Senators.

Ottawa has too many middle6 wingers already, younger wingers with decent upside. There’s no need to acquire Johnson, let alone give a 3rd for him.

Ottawa declines

Well he's been paid 5.3 so far so it's only 8.3 left for 3 seasons but he could go anywhere

Yeah, it’s not big money left, just $2.6MM, $2.5MM, $2.5MM, it’s just that it’s 70% bonus the final two seasons. The $1.75MM comes out of pocket each year, and a team like Ottawa doesn’t keep a float that large on hand, so old Eug needs to fork the cash over, lol, or whichever team owner that’s on the hook for it. The bonus for 20/21 has already been paid.

As a Leafs fan, the Nashville trade offends me.

I've seen a few trades involving Bonino, and they are all asking for assets back, instead of understanding he's a cap dump and needs to have assets given with him to get rid of him. Ottawa would be a good fit for his contract, Toronto a terrible fit. Nashville got 25, 35, 35 points for that $4.1MM cap, bottom6 numbers with second line pay. Now he has $2.4MM owing with a $4.1MM cap hit, he can be traded to a team with cap space and it's okay to get 30 points, but they aren't taking him to be nice, got to give to get rid of his cap.