What We Learned: NHL teams too eager to use up their cap space

It used to be that when you had a contract to trade because you needed breathing room against the salary cap, you had to give up something valuable to entice a team to help you out.

The more money you were asking teams to take, the better the extra piece had to be. There's basically a formula to this kind of thing; first-round picks or solid prospects would often change hands during the flat-cap years to facilitate salary dumps. Teams were that desperate for wiggle room so they could spend in free agency or just keep their roster cap-compliant.

I'm not sure that's the world we're living in anymore. With the salary cap going up sharply this summer for the first time in years — the upper limit was $79.5 million in 2018-19 and, due to a host of factors, only rose $4 million over the following f