The Vancouver Canucks returned home from their road trip on Wednesday and immediately made a series of roster moves.
What’s intriguing is the order of operations and I don’t mean BEDMAS or PEMDAS.
It started on Wednesday, when the Canucks sent Max Sasson down to the Abbotsford Canucks in the AHL.
Sending Sasson down on Wednesday was all about accruing cap space. The winger looked solid in his five games on the road trip, tallying an assist in each his first two games and using his speed to get in on the forecheck.
Notably, when the Canucks practiced on Thursday, Sasson was back with Aatu Räty and Danton Heinen on the fourth line and will likely play on Friday against the Columbus Blue Jackets — hope he didn’t have Taylor Swift tickets.
Then, on Thursday, the Canucks made three moves in this precise order:
- Jonathan Lekkerimäki and Cole McWard were called up from Abbotsford.
- Filip Hronek was placed on long-term injured reserve, retroactive to when he got injured on November 27.
- Sasson was recalled from Abbotsford.
What is key here is that Lekkerimäki and McWard were called up prior to Hronek going on LTIR, while Sasson was called up after.
The reason that order matters is that calling up Lekkerimäki and McWard first pushed the Canucks right up to the salary cap — in fact, slightly over by around $8,500. So, when Hronek was placed on LTIR, being that close to the salary cap maximized the size of their LTIR pool for exceeding the salary cap.
That calculation is made when a player is put on LTIR and is not recalculated after. That means whatever roster moves the Canucks make in the future, the amount the Canucks can exceed the salary cap while Hronek is on LTIR remains the same.
That amount is nearly the full value of Hronek’s $7.25 million cap hit thanks to those roster moves. So, even if both Lekkerimäki and McWard are sent back to the AHL in the future, the Canucks will still have the option, if they need it, of using almost all of Hronek’s cap hit in their LTIR pool.
When Sasson was recalled after Hronek was put on LTIR, the Canucks exceeded the salary cap using a small portion of that LTIR pool.
The downside of using the LTIR pool is that the Canucks stopped accruing cap space on Thursday. But that’s not a major issue, as they’ll likely go right back to accruing cap space in the near future.
If the Canucks go back under the salary cap — which they would if Lekkerimäki and McWard were sent back down — they’ll go right back to accruing cap space but still have the option of using the LTIR pool in the future.
It should be noted that Lekkerimäki and McWard were extra skaters at the Canucks’ practice on Thursday and didn’t skate with a regular line or pairing. That strongly suggests they won’t be in the lineup on Friday and will, in fact, be back in Abbotsford shortly.
This series of transactions, then, was all about the salary cap and maximizing their options. With Hronek set to miss two months of action, having that LTIR pool available to make moves could prove crucial for the Canucks.
