[dirk diggler]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

For all intents and purposes, they did. There was a lot of dead salary going back to Toronto in that deal.

Ottawa is a budget team, not a cap team, so they care more about actual money. Phaneuf's contract was frontloaded, so they were already paying less for him.

But Cowen was complete dead space as a healthy scratch and a 4.5M price tag. Buying him out was an issue and not a clear cut solution given his injury. Although, in the end the arbitrator sided with Toronto and he was able to be bought out.

Greening was and is an AHL player that was paid over 3M to play for the Marlies.

Michalek was injured making 4M a year.

Those three players combined for less than 50 games with the Maple Leafs but the Leafs paid well over 10M to them.

It doesn't show up on Capfriendly as salary retention, but when you move close to $15,000,000.00++ of dead or near-dead cap space in a trade, the other team is taking on salary...

I knew the Leafs took on salary but didn't know it was that much. that all makes sense.