Current rules for cash in trades(?)

[AIK1891]

Something occurred to me when reading one of the doldrums-of-summer speculations on the next expansion draft, and it got me started wondering what the current rules are for including cash in trades.

I fully understand that the old days of blockbuster trades including, e.g., "... and $10+ million in cash" have been banned, but does that mean all cash consideration is always banned down to the most trivial trade?

Given that Vegas did so much dealing up to the last expansion draft on the lines of "give us X and we'll select Y" or "give us A and we won't select B or C when you leave them unprotected" can wealthy teams sweeten such offers to the expansion franchise with cash included? Wealthy teams are free -- providing they stay within the cap limits -- to retain payroll in trades, much to the cash-flow improvement of poorer teams. But what about straight up "player N, pick P, ... plus $500K cash if you don't select our young defenseman Z"?

[PinkFloydFreak87]

I think that with vegas those trades made on the condition of not drafting a certain player were handshake agreements that weren't even enforceable. I thought I remembered reading that the expansion draft rules didn't technically allow that but I could be remembering wrong.

As far as cash in a trade, other than retaining salary, I don't believe cash can be used at all.

Along the lines of retaining salary, I'm curious about something. I know that the max that a team can retain is 50%, but would that mean nothing can be retained in a future trade as well? Say for example, a players cap hit is 8 million. Team A trades him to Team B and retains 50% salary. So Team A is on the hook for $4 mil, and so is Team B. Can team B trade that player to team C the following season or something and retain 50% again? Meaning that Team A is on the hook for $4 mil, Team B is $2 mil, and Team C is $2 mil? Or is any salary retention all "used up" for the length of a contract once 50% of the contract is retained by a team? Don't know if anyone might know that.

With Ottawa working themselves into a corner with Karlsson, they'll probably be looking to trade Karlsson near this coming seasons deadline, and there were all the rumors that Ottawa is only accepting a deal that involves Bobby Ryan's awful contract. I think there are probably teams that would only consider taking on Ryan's contract if Ottawa retained some salary and Ryan's new team could trade him again and retain some salary.