What is Retained Salary?

Teams can retain a portion of a player's salary and cap hit. In the case of the Laine trade, the Jets agreed to retain 26% of both his salary and cap hit. That means Winnipeg is responsible for $1.95M of his $7.5M Salary, and $1.755M of his $6.75M Cap Hit.  Teams often do this to make a player more attractive to trade, since they'll be covering a portion of the salary and cap hit.  The maximum % that can be retained by a team is 50%.