[clowe]

Originally Posted by CRS

No.

I think the wording for the salary cap was that regardless of how long you are out for, the avg salary will still hit the team cap.

So when burrows comes back, even if out for 1/2 of the season, his hit will be 2mil.

I hope I'm wrong, I know it's stupid but I think that it is the wording for how the salary cap works.

What you said is correct, but there is a LTIR replacement that teams can utilize to exceed the cap if they're at the cap ceiling.

I found this on another board that explains it pretty well:

How does LTIR work? Does my team gain cap space when a player goes on it?

LTIR is a somewhat difficult concept to understand correctly because there are many simplifications that have been disseminated over message boards and even the mainstream media that are incorrect.

When a player goes on LTIR, his cap hit does not “come off the books” so to speak. What LTIR allows a team to do, is to exceed the cap ceiling by a certain amount if they choose to do so.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example: The cap ceiling is at 50 million and a player with a cap hit of 5 million is placed on LTIR for the remainder of the season. If the team had a salary cap of 50 million, then they would be allowed to exceed the cap ceiling by 5 million. They can do this with call-ups, trades or free agent signings. If the team had a salary cap of 48 million, they can only exceed the cap ceiling by 3 million. If the team had a salary cap of 45 million or less, then they cannot exceed the cap ceiling at all.

A team does not cap space by having a player go on LTIR, rather they gain the ability to exceed the cap ceiling by a certain amount.

What’s the distinction between exceeding the cap ceiling and gaining cap space? Isn’t it the same thing?

No. They key difference is that LTIR cap relief is not “bankable”. For example, in 2009-10 Montreal Canadiens’ Andrei Markov missed 3 months due to an injury and was placed on LTIR. This allowed the Canadiens to exceed the cap ceiling by a considerable amount had they chosen to do so. However, the Canadiens made no major moves and remained under the cap. Markov’s stint on LTIR did not ‘save’ the Canadiens cap space that could be applied later in the season to acquire a high priced player. “If you don’t use it, you lose it”.

Please note that for teams who do end up exceeding the cap ceiling due to players on LTIR have to mindful of the player’s eventual return. If the Canadiens had replaced Markov with another high priced player, they would have been required to make cap room for both Markov and said player when Markov returned.