Quoting: Caniac2000
Hornqvist is going to have Arizona on his M-NTC. So that's not happening... Tampa needs Seabrook to be cap compliant. There are very few deals like Gardiner's where the team doesn't need the contract and he'll never play again. Weber is another one, but that has cap recapture penalties looming. Gardiner's comes with no strings attached, is fully insured, and therefore costs almost nothing in terms of real money. If no one wants Gardiner, fine... but Carolina are under no requirements to move him, and will not pay to move him, meaning if a team wants that deal, they will have to pay for it.
Stralman waived to Arizona so that really doesn't matter, Hornqvist will be moved for certain next year and would probably prefer to go to Arizona then be flipped at the deadline then to some pretender like Vancouver or something.
Tampa doesn't need Seabrook at all to be compliant, if you think that then you don't understand how LTIR works
Arizona literally just acquired a deal like Gardiner's in Brian Little. There is also Kesler, the aforementioned Seabrook, Bishop, Weber (that recapture penalty only effects Nashville), and Shaw. Then there are teams that will look to move cap out of players still in the NHL like Hornqvist, Lucic, Monahan, Clifton, Nemeth, Zucker, Kassian, Keith, E. Johnson, Jensen, and probably many more.
You are right that Carolina doesn't technically need to move Gardiner but if they want to accrue cap space during the regular season to do something like what Florida did and add Giroux or similar then you can't be using LTIR. However nobody is going to pay for Gardiner