Quoting: arousedcat
If he's on LTIR he won't count towards the cap... So it's not dead cap. If you buy him out then it is. No Nylander isn't injured, but you can't expect a guy that hasn't played a lick in the NHL to be tossed in midseason and perform. I don't care who the player is. There's a reason hockey isn't as exciting in the beginning of the season and it's because everyone isn't to their regular-form yet. Nylander has had to get to his regular form while everyone else already is that, so that's why he hasn't performed well. Both Suter and Parise started pretty much in the beginning of the year, so it wasn't an issue.
Here's an analogy: You start going to group fitness training at your local fitness club, and everyone else has already been doing it for a while. Do you really expect to be able to do what everyone else can on the first day? If you've every exercised before, you'll know the answer is no. You have to build your way up before you can perform at a high level. Now take that back to hockey where instead of working with a group, you're working against them in a professional sports game. You can't expect somebody that didn't go through training camp, preseason, or the first few months of the regular season to be thrown in and play at a high level. The kinesiology and physiology of your body doesn't work like that.
Parise last year coming off a back surgery, where he couldn't do anything, came back midseason and still put up better numbers than Nylander. Suter started the season, but had no preseason games, a limited camp, and no offseason workouts.
It was Nylander's choice to miss all of the preseason and 20 games of the year. So if he lays an egg it's on him, no passes. He's a $10m player this season putting up numbers like a league min 4th liner (J.T. Brown). You're paying him slightly more than Zucker + Spurgeon (50% retained) because of the retained money. That's 90p-100p for those 2 players combined, Nylander doesn't make up that difference. The late 1st is nice, but 3+ years away from doing anything, if at all.
If Horton's cap doesn't matter Tor can just keep him then with no harm no foul, right? Unless you get Horton's full cap hit as LTIR (unlikely) it's dead cap. He also eats up a spot on the 50 man roster.