Quoting: GiggywithGibby
You understand when you retain a percentage of the cap, you retain that same percentage of the real salary too, right? So a small market team who has poor gate revenue because they are currently rebuilding, thus bad, is paying for a former player to play elsewhere. That has actual, real world consequences for ownership.
For expiring deals it's no problem, you only have 30% of the actual salary left on the season to retain on, that doesn't end up amounting to much, but for a deal with multiple years on it like above, that's ~5 million dollars real money (as of today) that Anaheim is paying to NJ over the next 3.5 years.
Another way to look at....
Option 1: Keep Gibson and about $20 million in remaining payable
Option 2: Sell Gibson at full AAV for lower return; have $0 in remaining payable ("and all I got was this lousy t-shirt")
Option 3: Sell Gibson at 25% retained for higher return; have $5 million in remaining payable
There are obviously many other factors...
But there is likely a point where sinking $5m or so becomes worthwhile investment...whether it be a pick, a certain player, whatever.
It rounds out to less than 1% of their revenue.