Edited Sep. 19, 2022 at 2:51 p.m.
Vegas will also send an AHL contracts to Ottawa to comply with the contract limit. They will assign one of their three goalies to the AHL, which with Lehner and Weber's LTIR will make them compliant. They take Ritchie as part of the value they give up in the deal. Ritchie makes 3M in real dollars against a lower cap hit. This subsidizes Arizona taking Zaitsev since Arizona now frees up 500k this season at the expense of taking the last year of Zaitsev's contract.
Vegas gets a 1st (top 10 protected) and Brannstrom for a promising RHD they cannot seem to sign.
Arizona gets a 2nd to take on a RHD. It would be two 2nd round picks if they were not subsidizing it by dumping Ritchie.
Ottawa gets a young top 4 RHD. They need to dump Zaitsev to make the money work. They clearly aren't high on Brannstrom, who doesn't have much value, but would be a good low cap reclamation project for Vegas.
Ultimately, if the value is off, like maybe Vegas should get another B prospect, or Arizona should get an additional piece, that's fine. The point is more the structure of the deal. Which is Hague to OTT, Zaitsev to Arizona to help Ottawa's salary management, and then Ritchie to Vegas to subsidize Zaitsev to Arizona.