Weber, Little, and Voracek are all "LTIRetired". Their contracts are confirmed insured. Which means, the Coyotes are on the hook for as little as 20 percent of their total real money salary. This is not related to the cap, it is related to real dollars. The point is, out of the 12.25M those 3 players are owed in real money, the Coyotes will pay out as little as 2.45M. Insurance only covers 80 percent of a contract max, that is after a certain amount of games are missed. So these contracts are still costing the Coyotes money, with no benefit to their roster, when they are clearly trying to compete under a budget.

Joseph's salary this season is 2.7M. Acquiring Joseph also frees up another few hundred thousand as he takes up a spot in the NHL which would result in the Coyotes sending a player who makes 775k+ down to the AHL, where they will make as little as 80k. So with that in mind, this trade saves the Coyotes a few hundred thousand dollars.

Given that the Coyotes are aiming to be competitive, it is unlikely that they benefit from holding on to the Weber contract. The contract is an anchor because it still has 3 years left on it and will force whoever holds it to either operate well below the cap, or have the disadvantage of operating in LTI. The reason the Senators take it is because Dorion is desperate to clear cap, and with new ownership coming in if the Senators do not make the playoffs, the Weber contract is not Dorion's problem, it's a problem for the next GM. In the short term, it won't hurt the Senators to be in LTI because they will be right at the cap ceiling once they sign Pinto and fill their roster with 23 (or however many players they can get).

There is also the optics POV for the Coyotes, who are trying to compete. Shedding their LTIR contracts sends a message. They add an underperforming but otherwise decent NHL player, and they do not add to their payroll this season, which is important. Whether the above is worth the risk of the final 2 years of Joseph's contract would be the argument.

You could also tweak the deal and do it without Weber, with Ottawa maybe kicking in a 2nd or 3rd round pick, or a prospect. If Weber is insured 80 percent, the cost to the Coyotes of his salary is only 200k. Including him in the deal is the real whammy for the Senators. So maybe something like Little+Voracek for Joseph+(the equivalent of a 2nd) makes more sense for both sides. Joseph would still be real money salary neutral, and Ottawa wouldn't take on the enormous headache of the Weber contract as it related to LTI.

Add that this puts OTT way over the 110% cap during camp need to be at. I think AZ is fine w these 3LTIRs (2 are gone after season) and AZ has 5 RFA (13 more in AHL) that will need resigning at end of season.

That is a good point that I did not consider about off season LTIR or possible future tagging issues.

Like I said at the end of my post, maybe the most sensible thing would be to not include Weber. Instead Ottawa throws in an asset, maybe Sokolov and a 3rd, and the Coyotes toss back a nothing prospect and a late pick to obfuscate it being a deal to dump Joseph.

In terms of LTIR, the point of the trade from ARZ's POV would be that they are a budget team who is set to waste over 2M in real money (not cap) on Voracek and Little's post-insurance salary. This trade allows them to use that money on an NHL player instead. They are trying to compete.

From the AZ point of view the contracts for all three are used as IR and not LTIR giving the team the ability to operate with an extreme amount of cap flexibility. Multiple teams are in cap hell and may need to add a LTIR contract to ice a team this season. The waiver wire and post camp desperation trade mode could free up high value players (Valimaki/Ingram) that the coyotes could literally take their pick of. The cap management that Bill Armstrong has displayed is a masterclass in asset management. At any given time, these contracts could be used to acquire high asset players.

Crass thing to say, but why would Arizona waste this flexibility on a low value asset like M. Joseph?