Rejoint: mai 2015
Messages: 19,537
Mentions "j'aime": 6,691
The team can choose to either put him on IR or LTIR. LTIR means they can spend above the cap ceiling by his cap hit in order to replace him if they wanted to. IR there isn't any cap relief, the player just doesn't count as an active player on the roster anymore. So they can add another player to the roster and go over the 23 man limit. But once again, no cap relief. There is also some differences in how long the player must be "injured" for to apply for either category. If you have small injury that only has you miss 1-2 games or whatever, you can't go on LTIR because the player must not be able to enter the lineup for X amount of days to qualify for LTIR. Its so teams can't "cheat" the system. They still do however but its technically legal.
Ottawa has him on IR solely so that they can stay above the salary cap floor while not having to pay him. That's it.
Late edit: Ottawa purposefully doesn't want players that they have to pay actual dollars to. They actively want Gaborik because they aren't paying him but his cap is helping them reach the floor. So Backes being healthy enough to play at least a little forces them to have to pay him. They don't want that at. They'd prefer a 700K player instead of Backes so they can keep the salary overall lower.