At the time of writing, the Canadiens, Golden Knights, and Panthers are the only three teams that have negative projected cap space to open the season, per PuckPedia. Those clubs also have high-priced LTIR candidates. Montreal’s Carey Price and Vegas’ Alex Pietrangelo are either retired or ruled out for the season and have cap hits higher than the amount their respective clubs are in the hole. Florida is likely to have Matthew Tkachuk miss significant time to start the year as he continues to get back to full health from last season’s adductor injury. While they won’t have a whole year’s worth of LTIR relief for him, they still have a clear pathway to compliance to start the season without making a cap-shedding trade. But while these teams have a pathway to cap compliance, it’s not as simple as making an LTIR placement and calling it a day. LTIR usage isn’t blanket cap relief based on the cap hit of the injured player — the amount of financial relief a team gets is tied directly to how well a team optimizes
