That's part of it. Gimme my money now.
The other part is that, and it won't necessarily make a difference in this situation but, if Tavares was to say be shopped around, assuming he didn't have a NTC, he would be attractive to small market teams that could artificially increase their spending to hit the floor of the salary cap, without actually having to spend the dollars on him cause they were already paid up front by the Leafs. So $11m goes against the Sens, but they only actually have to pay Tavares a fraction of that out of their own pockets.