Quoting: A_K
Yeah I don't love it, but if the neck thing disappears I see no reason to bash the trade value. Just looking at the Blues team for the future though, losing Thomas and Neighbours and adding a 10m long-term forward makes it extremely hard to keep the band together. It probably means no more Perron, no more ROR, no more Kyrou, and the guys that would fill around Eichel just got traded away for him. Basically, the window becomes 2 years, and then the team painfully dissolves to nothing but bad immovable contracts and a star center. Would be a fun ride though, and you could trade Eichel in 2 yrs to trigger the rebuild, which would be peak irony.
With Eichel, Schenn, Buchnevich, Saad, Faulk, Krug, Parayko, and Binnington locked up long term, I don't expect it would prevent them from locking people up all that much. Likely lose Perron, but at 33 that might end up being better anyways since he could command more than he's worth. O'Reilly, Kyrou, Sundqvist, and Barbashev will need new contracts in 2 years, but the cap is also supposed to rise by $2m.
So $7m left in cap space (including current cap space after the trade) + their current contracts to sign those 4 players. That's enough to resign O'Reilly at $9m, Kyrou at $6m, Sundqvist at $4m, and Barbashev at $3m.