Quoting: CSStrowbridge
Can someone from Carolina explain why the Canes would make this trade? Are they in that much cap hell that they needed to shave $1.4 million this badly?
They didn’t need the cap space now, but they would have needed it when Pacioretty comes off LTIR. Bear wasn’t playing, so keeping him on Carolina's NHL roster until then would not have increased his value, and might have stunted his development. (His 25, but I think he’s still developing.)
Rare loss for Carolina, but only because they had to retain salary on Bear. $400,000 is not a lot of cap hit, and they did get a positive return for him, but I think they would have been better off not to sign him this past summer. I couldn’t fault them for that though, because at that time it looked like he was going to be a regular on the third pair. They couldn’t know that Chatfield, who was below Bear on the depth chart last season, DeHaan, whom nobody wanted to offer a contract, and Coghlan were all going to slot in ahead of Bear. Once that happened, he wasn’t going to play unless two defensemen got hurt.
In the absence of any trade offers that didn’t require salary retention, I’d have been inclined to waive him. If somebody claimed him, that would have cleared his full cap hit. If nobody claimed him, they still could have made this trade with Vancouver, or they could have sent him to the minors so that at least he’d be playing while they waited for a better deal. But I guess they valued the 5th-round draft pick and getting rid of Pederson’s $750,000 salary (though he wasn’t affecting their cap hit) more than the $400,000 cap hit they retained.
Carolina has also made a lot of noise lately about being a preferred destination for players who have a choice of where they go. They probably want to show that if somebody doesn’t fit in, they’re not going to hold him back if there’s an NHL job for him somewhere else. It’ll be interesting to see if Bear still has that job when Vancouver’s injured defensemen come back, but for now I’m sure he’s just happy to be playing. I wish him luck.