Quoting: budgeteam
Your post should say "you think Bjorkstrand should have had more value", not that he had value.
Yes, Columbus may have gotten more for him if they dealt him a month ago, or at the trade deadline. They were dealing from a position of weakness based on getting Gaudreau, which they likely did not anticipate.
I don't know how you can look at what players are being sold off for this off season and be surprised that good players with money and term are difficult to move this far into free agency when there is so little cap flexibility throughout the league.
Go and look up and down Capfriendly and see how many teams actually have 5.4M in cap space. Then disqualify teams that are budget teams. Then disqualify teams that still have outstanding RFAs/UFAs to add. Then disqualify teams that have different positions they need to prioritize filling (Ottawa with top 4 D for example). Then disqualify teams who need to maintain long term cap flexibility after this season.
Is it possible there is a reason Bjorkstrand was acquired by the one team who has the most long term cap flexibility in the entire league?
Everybody on Capfriendly should salivate for and understand a trade like this. This is a trade highly influenced by the dynamics of the salary cap. It is shocking to me the amount of people who don't understand these dynamics on a site devoted to how the cap works.
To expand on this idea.
There were only 11 teams who could take Bjorkstrand without sending CBJ back cap. Out of those 11 teams, 4 are unlikely to be a fit due to budget or other needs (OTT, ANA, BUF, ARZ), CHI appears to be rebuilding/tanking so they might not be a fit, NJD, DAL, NYI, and CGY have significant RFAs that will likely won't leave remaining cap for Bjorkstrand. Then you add in that he had a 10 team no trade list, so you can assume any Canadian team such as WPG has a high chance of being on it.
Who does that leave that can legitimately bid on Bjorkstrand ONLY accounting for cap space this year, and not accounting for cap space next year or beyond? Seattle and Detroit for sure. Then Chicago as a maybe if they don't care about adding him due to tanking, and Winnipeg ONLY if they aren't on his no trade list and do not have other moving parts to worry about (Cap coming back from possible Dubois deal with MTL for example).
So now out of Seattle and Detroit, the two possible destinations, do those two destinations have other teams calling them up, offering players? Are there still good free agents on the market? Yes to both.
In what world does any team who needs to dump (without taking back salary) a multi-year contract for a good (but not superstar tier) player have any leverage?
All this stuff is basic info that is out there to view. You can combine this info with the trades we see happen, and probably deduce that Jarmo did a good job here even to dump the player to facilitate the signing of Gaudreau without having to trade or walk away from Laine. There were like 2-4 possible teams with cap and money to back up that cap.