Quoting: RipNasty
Simply put, every contender is going to have to send cap back. Pittsburgh would want to send back Zucker or some other bad contract. Boston Would have to send back Nick Foligno or Craig Smith. Guys over 30 who are not worth their contract. No matter what St Louis is going to have to take back cap. Or drastically limit who they can send him to. How is this not a known fact?
Maximizing the assets St Louis ends up with is their GM's job no? He will know cap is coming back. It's a fact, in almost every case it's going to be a bad contract because that's who contenders want to move to make room for better players. TO doesn't have bad contracts. Kerfoot is certainly worth 3.5 million and doesn't hamstring you down the road like a Charlie Coyle would but guess who Boston would love to send back to get ROR? The belief that leaf fans refuse to see they Kerfoot has no value is so blatantly a bias thing that it's silly. Just pick any contender and look at which player they would love to move to get ROR and find me a team that has a better player even a player equal to Kerfoot? Spoiler alert, there isn't one. Everyone has a contract they would like to move or need to move to fit ROR and almost all of them are players with actual negative value. If I am St Louis's GM do I want to add bad cap so I don't have to flip a guy because it's a little more work? Come on
You're literally making my point for me. Yes, St. Louis is probably taking back cap in an ROR deal, I'm sure they're going to be fine with that. But that's all they're looking at it as: money. Whether it's Craig Smith, Jason Zucker, or Alex Kerfoot, it's just money and a name coming back to them, there's no positive value to it for them.
If they're unloading their vets at the deadline, they're not in the playoff hunt. The quality of the player attached to the expiring cap hit means nothing to the Blues, so Kerfoot being a better than Smith or Zucker or whoever else you'd throw in that pile is irrelevant.
Kerfoot, in this deal, is cap ballast. That's the point I made at first, and I'm confused as to why you keep arguing this. St. Louis wouldn't be trading ROR until at or close to the deadline, so the flip-ability of any of these players for an additional asset is moot.