Joined: May 2015
Posts: 19,538
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Lundell is a top prospect. Most teams don't trade top prospects at all, ever. Let alone for guys like Chiarot and Lehkonen. Who aren't bad players but they're just not the caliber of players needed in a trade for another teams top prospect.
Retaining on pending free agents in a trade only increases their value slightly. Chiarot and Lehkonen are both free agents so they're only owed approx 1/5 of the remaining year of their salary assuming the trade happens at the TDL. In the grand scheme of things, that isn't very much. Retaining only returns a much better value when the players involved have term left on their contract.
Retaining salary on rentals is more about ensuring the team makes the trade with you than it is about increasing what you'll get in value back. The other team may add a 3rd or a 4th more just to seal the deal. But in no way would it bump the value you get back to another teams top prospect. It has happened in the past obviously, Filip Forsberg for Martin Erat, etc, but they almost unanimously lost those trades and GMs are starting to get wise to the idea of trading their premium young talent.