Its pretty neat how most franchises I've been to, have had little to no issues keeping me when I expressed that I'd like to stay long term with most of the teams I get drafted to.
I mean if we're talking about loyalty, most of the franchise I've been "loyal" to have continuously made the playoffs. I put a lot of credit of course on good GMing.
I know Chris had to put in a lot of thought to be able to keep me in NYA but then again Frank managed to keep a good core contending while I was in Davos as well and so on and so forth. I know he has spent the time crunching the numbers and that's how they made it fit.
So from experience alone, keeping a team of loyal players that want to stay can be challenging but not impossible. Obviously players will get moved but for the most part a core of players that want to stay and play well can generally be had without needing extra cap space as I've noticed currently.
On restructuring of contracts...well that's just bad cap management in the first place.