If Chicago's willing to give up a 3rd for Josh Bailey, I would assume that Lou could just call them directly instead of getting another $5M goalie they don't need for next season (even though I truly do love Robin as a player)

This does nothing to alleviate Vegas cap hell, You're minimally 2 players short and 0 cap incase of short term injuries. But then Vegas always manages to circumvent the cap by putting up to 8 players on LTIR at once. So they might not have an issue.

You can place players on LTIR without them having an injury? I thought the league checks if player is unfit ?

You're correct, the league verifies and checks in with LTIR injuries, people just learned what "cap circumvention" means and will not stop saying it whenever they can.

I agree, though I don't see any scenario where we would be buyers like that. It would signal Stan 2.0 and that would be a massive worry to the fanbase, myself included.