Long-Term Injured Reserve

by Mario's Mullet on Dec 29, 2011 9:14 PM EST

I'm by no means a capologist, so I was wondering if someone could explain to me how the long-term injury reserve works. For example, if Sid goes on the LTIR, the Pens still pay him his $8.7, but does it come off the cap? Last season, this gave us room to bring in Kovalev. Hopefully Sid is back sooner than later, I was just wondering how it works. Any insight is much appreciated!

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The general idea is that if someone is on LTIR then his salary doesn’t “count against the cap” for the duration of the time he is on LTIR — and so the team can take on more salary, thus replacing the cap hit.

A few notes, though:

First, there is also a roster limit. So even though it would take 10+ Eric Tangradis to replace Sid, they can’t just bring in 10 more guys.

Second, if we get serious about the details, it’s actually not that Sid’s (or whoever’s) salary “doesn’t count against the cap”. Rather, when a player is on LTIR the team is permitted to exceed the cap by the amount of cap hit calculated for the LTIR player for the duration of his time on LTIR.

Note that the amount by which a team is allowed to exceed the cap is not the injured player’s entire cap hit, but just the fraction of that cap hit that is incurred for the duration of his time on LTIR. It doesn’t typically make much difference, but there could be a problem if there were some weird bonuses built into a replacement player’s contract.

I think the weirdest thing about it all is that, from a cap-management standpoint, the ideal for a team is that their injured player has a higher salary, because that means they have more options available for a replacement player.

Also: For a really good piece dissecting salary cap and LTIR issues, related to the whole “Eric Tangradi is being sent to Wheeling” weirdness from October 2010, see here.

Jagr? I don't even know 'er.

by PopRocks on Dec 30, 2011 2:09 AM EST reply actions

About the distinction… The Capitals are at the cap with Poti on LTIR. If his cap hit disappeared, they’d be able to add roughly four times Poti in salary at the deadline because of banked space. In reality they can only add one times his salary, since if they don’t use LTIR cap relief now, it’s lost, unlike regular cap space.

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