Stop retaining millions of dollars on multi-year deals no one does that.

Still better than keeping his entire cap hit for 4 more seasons or trading assets to dump him to Seattle

Depending on the assets, it might be better to do that

Eh even at retention (which doubt SJ does) I don’t want him until he’s 40 with an NMC. Better options out there for 4-5m

Even retained, Burns is awful.

It's not though. He's still likely to be a top 4 D-Man for the duration of the deal and is currently still a top pairing guy (not at his prior Norris level but also not 30+ other guys that can eat 25-26 mins a night at the level he does). Retaining that much for that many years to get basically no value is bad. Given the clearly stated intentions of getting back in the playoffs this year, much better off keeping him and letting him continue to eat quality minutes than to give him away for basically nothing while getting a fraction of the cap space back.

With that retention SJ should be asking for a 1st. People act like Burns sucks but he doesn’t at all. He just has 1-2 years too many on his contract.