Quoting: Campabee
Teams that would want Gallagher are Vancouver, Edmonton, Carolina, New York Rangers and Nashville to name a few that need a top 6 forward of Gallagher's ilk. They may not have cap to absorb the full cap hit but they can and would move out salary to facilitate such a trade for instance, Edmonton could include 2 of Ryan, Barrie, Cici, Koskinen, Russell or Turris plus a decent package of pick and prospects to facilitate a Gallagher trade. Vancouver could include any of Pearson, Dickinson, Myers or Poolman to facilitate a trade. Carolina could include any of Neiderreiter, Fast, Martinook, Stepan or Gardiner. New York could use anyone on their roster as they currently have 6.3 Mil so would only need to move out 200k but would probably look to off load a bit more anyway. Nashville also currently has enough cap space and is a playoff team but could include a cap dump if they wanted as well. You should stop trying to downplay players values cause you have some sort of personal bias against the Habs, there are teams out there that would pay handsomely to have Gallagher on their team even if you don't believe they would. BTW L.A. would also love to have Gallagher, Anaheim I am not so sure they even know what they are at this point so they probably wouldn't invest in Gallagher since they are lost between rebuilding and a playoff team.
Your financial analysis is as unrealistic as your evaluation of Gallagher's trade value.
I won't waste a lot of time discussing each of the teams you mention; I'll just use the Rangers as an example.
The fact that NY has $6.3 million in cap space this season is utterly unrelated to the issue of how Gallagher's cap hit affects them for the next five years. Next season, NY loses Ryan Strome (gaining $4.5 million in cap space) but has to pay raises to Mika Zibanejad ($3.15 million more than his cap hit this year) and Adam Fox ($8.5 million more), so there goes your "$6.3 million" buffer. If you look at the summary at the bottom of the Rangers team page, you'll see that they have less than $9.7 million in anticipated cap space and 6 roster slots to fill, and two of their RFAs are Kappo Kakko and Sammy Blais, who won't aggregate to less than $3 million (and that's being conservative). So that will leave less than $6.7 million to spread among Gallagher and three other players.
Sure, NY can trade away some bottom guys for futures and get additional space, but my point was that there aren't contenders who are going to be able to absorb Gallagher's contract without other, and major, adjustments. And why would rebuilding teams at the bottom of the cap table like Arizona and Buffalo and even Columbus take Gallagher on without exacting a price rather than spending assets to acquire him?
Your idea that Edmonton, of all teams, would perform those gyrations to add Gallagher when their weaknesses are obviously on defense and in goal, and they are uncomfortably close to the cap ceiling next season, is particularly far-fetched.