Habs accept

1. Ottawa declines because we have no use for Chiarot and there's too much salary coming from Montreal.


2. If Ottawa can find a way to terminate Matt Murray's contract, that would be just dandy.

Chairot Can be flipped right away I forgot to add that trade. One Sec

Looking at the two trades with Montreal and Edmonton in a vaccum, this is what it looks like from Ottawa's perspective:



Ottawa Gains:

Brendan Gallagher and his contract with no salary retention
3rd round pick for 2023
4th round pick for 2023
6th round pick for 2022



Ottawa loses:

Erik Brannstrom
2nd round pick for 2022
3rd round pick for 2022
3rd round pick for 2022
4th round pick for 2023



As I look at this post as well as the Mark Stone trade with Vegas, Ottawa appears to be getting the short end of the stick.

Do you really think another team is going to give Murray approx. $18/19M for the next 2.5 years?

I feel like walking away from $19ish million is something that both Murray and the NHLPA would be 100% against.

Mutual contract terminations are extremely rare, and almost exclusively used for players playing for the league minimum (Or close), so that they can explore options overseas. The rare examples of big money players to end up with their contracts terminated are 100% because they eggregiously violated the terms of their contracts.

Buy him out. The buyout is extremely palatable for a team that's doesn't have cap issues.

Oilers accept.

Exactly. There are way more examples of players playing in ****ty situations for years when they are playing on unmovable contracts (more than they are worth), then there is of guys just agreeing to walk away from $20M because their feelings got a bit hurt.

Do today's youth not know the Wade Redden saga?

Todays " Youth" Doesn't Care about the Wade Redden saga

100%. Sven Baertschi anyone? Andrew Ladd? Bryan Bickell (Sorry Hawks fans...Teuvooooooo!)? Sheldon Souray? Rick Dipietro before he got bought out?

Lots of examples...very few of actual terminations of players that had anything more than a league minimum-ish deal. Buff and Richards are the only two that I can think of, and they were both with cause, and I believe they both ended up settling with the team for a payout.

That's a shame. You can learn a lot from looking at the past...in this case, you could quickly figure out why mutual contract terminations don't happen when there's $19 mil left to be paid out

L. Eriksson another example of sticking it out in a tough spot.

P. Berglund is another mutual termination, but that there was bit more backstory to that one as well.

hamilton, thats where they go

I've got absolutely no faith that Brendan Gallagher is going to be able to stay consistently healthy or remain a consistently productive offensive player into his mid 30s. I want no part of that contract