Modifié 1 août 2019 à 11 h 43
Quoting: palhal
I fail to see how having Callahan on LTIR hurts Tam0a's cap. Gee the Leafs have two guys make 10.6m on LTIR, but it isn't hurting their ability to sign Marner. But somehow folks think that having 5.8m LTIR Callahan hurts Tampa and their ability to sign Point
LTIR and cap space are not really cumulative, and it's not easy to spend to the maximum of both. Basically, LTIR means you are allowed to replace that players salary, even if it would put you over the cap, but it doesn't just come off your cap, and it doesn't just extend your ceiling by the amount you placed on LTIR. The timing of activating your LTIR is important, because you basically get to add the LTIR space to your current team's payroll to create a new cap. In the offseason, this isn't an issue as you can exceed the cap, then use LTIR to create a new ceiling for your club that is exactly the cap plus the LTIR space. However, when you enter the season, you can't exceed the cap at all, and if you activate LTIR first, and you aren't at the cap, you may not gain much additional space.
In Tampa's case, they had about $76.5M in payroll, so after the season starts, activating LTIR only brings their new ceiling to $82.3M, which essentially means they waste their current cap space.
Also, it could be that Tampa isn't allowed to use LTIR during the summer because Callahan played last year. I thought the wording on why you can use LTIR in the summer had something to to with having been continuously on LTIR and having a doctor's note stating they would never play. Callahan having played last year could create an issue if that is the interpretation. Not at all sure on this one, but it could be part of the issue.
In either case, Toronto and Tampa had similar problems. They could both sign their big ticket RFA during the summer because it's easier to use a combo of space and LTIR during the summer, but they could be taking a substantial risk by essentially making the first day of the season a hard deadline in doing so. Tampa had a small amount of actual money that would be owed to Callahan on LTIR, so they took the route of paying in assets (in this essentially cash), to make that go away. Toronto had an uninsured contract that would be quite expensive to move, so they took the opposite approach and gained an asset to essentially convert their remaining cap space into LTIR space, making it easier to use all at once to cover Marner's contract.