The last few off seasons, the Senators make a bunch of noise about adding "top 6 forwards" and "top 4 defensemen", then we end up with pieces like Derek Stepan and Michael Del Zotto. Here is this year's version of that bargain bin shopping. The Senators are a budget team. They want to ice the best players they can under their real money salary budget. They do not care about cap, since they won't be at the ceiling. The Flyers are a cap team. They apparently want to compete under Tortorella. This trade frees up nearly 6 million in cap space once they bury Del Zotto.

-Del Zotto is negative value due to his cap hit.
-Despite being a 20 goal scorer, no one aside from Arizona, Buffalo, or Ottawa is likely to take JVR because of his bloated cap hit.
-JVR has a 4M base salary. This trade happens in July, after his signing bonus is paid.
-Del Zotto has a 2.25M base salary. He is a sunk cost, since no one will trade for him.
-This means Ottawa gets JVR for +1.75M in salary. That is a very good deal. Every team in the league would sign JVR for 1 year 1.75M. They add approx. 6M in cap, but that is irrelevant.
-Philadelphia will bury Del Zotto. Therefore, they free up about 6M in cap. A tremendous amount of space.

No picks are exchanged, because this is equally beneficial to both sides due to how skewed his cap and his salary is. He does not have trade protection so he cannot save himself from being relocated to Carp Ontario.

Another option would be to Arizona for Nick Ritchie. The purpose of the trade would be to get more cap on to the books of Arizona, with less overall money spent per million in cap space. The league apparently warned Arizona at the deadline about acquiring Weber. If true, it means they want them to cool it down a bit with trades that don't have a hockey component. Ritchie's cap hit is about 1.4M when buried, 2.5M if he makes the team. He has a 3.3M salary, which is higher than his cap hit. That is what makes the trade work. JVR has a base salary of 4M against a cap of 7M. This means that Arizona gets an additional 4.5M of cap space covered while only spending 700k more in salary. If they are trading Chychrun, they may need to acquire some more contracts to hit the floor and also to have a cushion for in season selling.

I see the reasoning behind this trade. Philly trades JVR before season to free up CAP space but unfortunately for a team that can't score giving up another 20 goal scorer for nothing is it worth it? Or do you hold unto JVR til trade deadline and get picks maybe a prospect. On the OTA side they get a guy who can score at the expense of a D man that should have retired a few years back who BTW already played in Philly.

They aren't giving him up for nothing. They are giving him up in exchange for approx 6M in cap space.

Philadelphia is usually successful at attracting big free agents. Whatever that 6M enables them to acquire in free agency or a different trade would be the return for making this move.

I don't think its a terrible plan B but I'm not even sure he qualifies as a top 6 forward anymore

You have to look at it like, if JVR was a UFA and signed in Ottawa for 1 year at 1.75M, would that be good value? Del Zotto is a sunk cost assuming Ottawa won't buy him out, and won't trade him with retained salary. Del Zotto's 2.25M going out subsidizes JVR's 4M coming in, so it is only +1.75M for Ottawa.

JVR has basically 6 years straight of scoring 20+ goals (if the Wuhan Virus had not hit those 2 years he would have 20) so to categorize him as not a top 6 is very interesting or foolish on your part. What for you constitutes a top 6 forward then?

If offered, PHI needs to jump on this trade. Time to rebuild and not retool.

Giving up JVR, who may get you 20 goals, but have no intention of resigning, is worth the cap space and the first step in changing the culture. Del Zotto goes to LV or is released.

And even though JVR withstood Babcock for 3 years, I don't think in this final year of his contract, he thrives under Torts.

I feel like any JVR trade before the season is absolutely retool. I'd think his best value is as a rental, with salary retained to a competitor. No one currently competing would take his cap hit now.

But after spending a lot of time browsing this site while taking poops and questioning my sanity, this might be the most levelheaded, and thought out trade proposal I've seen. I don't want a Gostisbehere style paid cap dump, and this gives me hope there is another option for JVR if the flyers go spendy in free agency, cough Gaudreau cough...