CHI declines. There will be, at the very least, a little bit of desperation around the league with the cap only going up $1M and all the players that have earned big paydays.

islanders can afford it if they dont trade him lmao. There is zero desperation. We have no assets to acquire anyone good with a high cap hit either

Cool. But in the comments you said "...there arent very many contracts looking to get dumped." Which I took as you referring to the entire league. Regardless, CHI doesn't NEED to take cap dumps, they are just willing to for the right price. If you are right and there aren't any out there, so be it. There are plenty of ways to get to the cap floor, it's a consideration but it isn't a concern.

Islanders are not the only team in the league that would like to move some cap. The cap is barely going up and 3/4ers of the league has at least one contract they would love to move on from. More importantly, there are very few teams with cap space they can spare and not all those teams have the financial resources or appetite to buy picks. Serious question for you....how many teams have cap space where they will be in a position to spare 2.66 in cap (the buyout #) this Summer? 3? 4? 5? 10? There are probably in excess of 20 that would like (not necessarily need) to dump a contract. Yes the "desperate" teams are probably only a handful, but make no mistake that there are a bunch of other teams that would like to dump a contract to improve their team by spending the cap on other parts and certainly do not HAVE to.