Salary retention for 3 seasons adds up. Calgary paid a first to unload Monahan's 6.375 million. What is Markstrom worth before retention? Is their cap coming the other way?
3 seasons' worth of salary retention also fills one out of the three spots the Flames have.
Salary retention becomes complicated over a number of years. I imagine that talks broke down not because "Murray is too cheap", but because the Devil's aren't willing to pay enough for it. That's my guess. It shouldn't just be included as part of the deal. It limits Calgary's ability to do things over those additional years, and they should be compensated for that, especially since it seems like Conroy has the green-light to act as a middleman between different teams, and will probably have the green light next season too.
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