Report: Atlantic Division rival almost involved in blockbuster deal with the Leafs

On the subject of the O'Reilly/Acciari deal, the Minnesota Wild were involved in the trade, coming in as a "broker team", retaining $1.875M on O'Reilly before shipping him off to the Leafs for a 2025 4th round pick. However, before the Wild entered the fray, it was actually a heated division rival who were in talks with the Leafs and the Blues in hopes of retaining that salary for the 4th round pick that the Leafs dealt to the Wild.

Per Arpon Basu, a Montreal Canadiens correspondent for The Athletic, the Habs were indeed trying to broker the deal for the Leafs. The problem they faced was that all of the roster call-ups they needed to make to covered for injured players on the roster put them too close to the salary cap to allow O'Reilly's contract to flow through them in order to retain salary.

Players who are on IR, as well as the players called up to replace them in the lineup both count against the salary cap. The only time that a player's salary does not count against the salary cap is if that player is placed on Long-Term Injured Reserve, which would keep them out of the lineup for a minimum of 10 games and 24 days. The Habs simply didn't have anyone who was eligible to join Carey Price, Sean Monahan and Paul Byron on the LTIR list and thus, could not afford to take on O'Reilly's $3.75M cap hit (50% of his $7.5M salary after the Blues' portion of the retention) before retaining the $1.875M that Minnesota ended up taking on.

Bonus points to you if you were able to follow all of that without being completely confused.