Pierre Lebrun on JT Miller to TSN1040: "I had talked to a Lightning executive at the draft who said 'we aren't thrilled to lose this guy'. He was puzzled about the social media reaction [to the trade]."

I think the timing confused people, they saw other teams making trades where the value was influenced greatly by the cap hit (Subban probably being the best example), and assumed - quite incorrectly - that Miller was a guy that Tampa was offering at a discount because of his cap hit and their own cap situation. I think it was actually the opposite: just because Tampa was motivated to offload some cap didn't change the fact that Miller's value was increased by being on a good contract with multiple years left (look at what Kevin Hayes signed for). I think you're 100% right, Tampa's desire to trade him was probably almost entirely irrelevant because there would have been multiple teams all making offers in full awareness that other teams were coveting him and that Tampa had lots of options. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are tons of Canucks fans out there that didn't understand this, but I am always surprised, particularly in this sub, to see how many people who seem to have a pretty strong interest in the team/league/rules/trades/etc have a very 'EA Sports GM Mode' level of understanding of how value works in the NHL.

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