I always have heard the Flames in the end met Ottawa's ask contingent on coming to terms with Stone.
Stone wanted $10M and the Flames didn't think they could do it within their cap structure with Tkachuk as a pending RFA (probably not wrong about that).
In the end the real problem was signing Neal 6 months earlier - Flames under Trevliving never having the foresight to keep some cap space open for in-season moves was a big part of his failures here. Always had to spend to the cap right away in the first week of July.
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