They didn't have a choice. They needed to clear space to sign the guy they felt was important to compete - which was their priority. The choice was not to sign Kadri. Which I guess they could have made, but again, given the strategy they had chosen, that would have left them short a key player.
He only played 25 games that season for Montreal. That was the issue. Allocating cap to a guy that couldn't play.
He wasn't traded until Feb 2022 (not a year later as you say) and only after he re-signed with Montreal as a UFA. So that's irrelevant as it assumes he would have re-signed in Calgary, which is an unknown.
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