MTL will keep Lekhonen, but Byron is available...

No one wants Byron. He's 31 with 3 more years remaining at $3.4m, and is injury prone having just had 29 game and 56 game seasons.

Vegas just gave away Schmidt basically for free to move $6m. Absolutely no way anyone will take $3.4m of an injury prone player with that term and age, unless of course Montreal adds a significant asset.

So, now you understand that you will not get Lehkonen, unless of course, Colorado adds a significant asset!!

McKeown has had a couple of stints with the Canes and he's always looked really solid in a 3rd pairing role. He doesn't have high ceiling, but he kind of reminds me of someone like Trevor van Riemsdyk. I'm kind of surprised Canes haven't given him more opportunities. I wouldn't be surprised to see him traded in a deal like this or as a piece of a larger deal.

Detroit's not retaining $1.2 mil on Lekhonen, That's not the kind of deals Yzerman is looking at.

Value wise a 3rd or a 4th is probably fair for retaining $1.2M for 1 season. But it really isn't enough incentive for Detroit to do this. As DiehardRedWingsFan58 pointed out this isn't a move Yzerman make.

Why isn't it a move Yzerman would make? He has oceans of capspace and is in rebuild move, so why not pick up an asset using only capspace that's unused anyways? He also took on salary in the Staal trade to facilitate things for NYR, so I don't see why he would be opposed to something like this if the price is right.

In any case, you can just substitute Detroit for any other team with a bit of capspace and it works just as well.

McKeown was on one of the best PK units in the AHL last season and is only 24 still so would be a worthwhile pickup. I was really surprised that nobody picked him up on waivers last year.

Staal is the very first cap dump he has taken on as GM and he will most likely play 1st or 2nd pair minutes. Going into the offseason DeKeyser and Nemeth were Detroit's only left defenseman other than a couple of prospects and trading for Staal filled a hole. So you could say it isn't really a cap dump at least from Detroit's perspective. Now if you don't want Detroit fans to reply because it could be any team you could just select a different team as your placeholder.

Adding Lehkonen is meh for me.
All those trades and movement to add Lehkonen seems like alot of work for little return.. seems like overkill to add him to the roster.
Leave Jost on the starting 12F and save that 1.2mil for a trade deadline deal

You're not actually saving $1.2m though, because you'd still need at least a $700k 13th forward to take Lehkonen's spot, so the most you save is $500k.

I think he's a guy who can stick around long-term btw, so it's not just a short-sighted move.