Quoting: huey2107
So basically what that says is if someone gets hurt, and you put them on IR you dont get the relief of it accruing forward, however you do get the ability to have a cap hit increase. So its a gamble, and they do have the space to activate him THIS year, I don't think they would next. With the allowable 10% over the cap in the off-season, they would be able to hold him. Its all just a risk, especially with dumba, who makes $6M and is hurt all the time.
I understand how LTIR works. It's not a cap increase, its just that you're able to spend up to the player's contract for a replacement which may put you over the cap.
Capfriendly has a great FAQ on this, here's an excerpt:
"When a player is placed on LTIR, their cap hit remains on the teams cap payroll and it continues to count as it always did.
It also does not provide the club with additional cap-space savings that can be banked for future use while the team operates above the salary cap. Instead, LTIR provides relief if the club's averaged club salary, or payroll, begins to exceed the upper limit. "
The way you "go over the cap" is because you can spend up to, in this case, Weber's contract but since his contract still is counted towards the team's payroll (and thus your cap) it's not adding any additional cap space. You'd have to activate Weber first which kills this whole thing. We don't have the space to activate him considering the fact we have to sign Fiala, Kahkonen, and fill out the other 4 roster spots to ice a full team. In other words, our total cap space
plus Weber's cap hit has to be under the $82.5M cap ceiling when the season starts. At that point, Weber could be moved to LTIR and we could spend up to his contract on additional roster players, but because Weber's cap hit technically still counts towards you cap you are over the cap. You still only have $82.5M in cap space to ice your team, there's nothing magical going on here that changes that.
I'm honestly shocked that both Friedman and Russo mentioned this idea before they did any investigating into whether or not adding Weber would "raise your cap". It doesn't work like that, there's zero chance we're trading for him.