I don't think we would have paid a heap for Kaufusi. Letting Tolman go can pay for a bit of his wage.
Let Nikora go. Next year go with edges of Teig and Sifa.
Yes we will need to upgrade Kennedy, Big Sexy and Ron. Not sure how much that will cost but none are elite at this stage.
Wade, Fifita and Moylan is ~2m, that's a lot of cap space to play with. If we can't manage to manufacture what we want with that much coin we need to hire new people to manage the cap.
It is a big chunk of money but when you're talking about spending 850k of it on Burton the pool gets a lot smaller very quick.
I think if we were paying Burton $850k to come to us then upgrading Hynes to $850k is the right thing to do (and the smart thing to do too)*
So that's around 1.1/2 spent which leaves approx 900 to retain Ramien (hopefully on no more), Talakai (Origin and selected for Tonga), Mulitalo (NZ), Katoa (Samoa) and will Kennedy who has a good couple of years now as a very dangerous spine player, and Teig who is a good up and coming edge player. Throw in more money for Brailey, BHU and Williams too though and you can probably see why I think it is a stretch.
Your concession for Nikora to leave (oh no, anyway...) and use Talakai on edge definitely helps.
Tracey/Iro/Ferris then become your centres probably (based off current players in system).
Personally I would suspect we probably lose at least one more of Sione, Ronnie or Will too, replace with Tracey/Iro/Ferris/Dykes**/Miller/Lualua/Stonestree/Samrani/whoever the **** because we are talking 2024
*Nicho chose us in the first place Burton only would be coming because the weak club he chose stayed weak. Nicho also would be (hopefully) worth extending and retaining at that stage and a nice early upgrade probably helps get that done smoothly.
**another spot where some money may be spent to retain, however could be a cheap Kennedy replacement (with Taukamo for depth).