Trading for LTIR players
With the oilers current situation facing offer sheets, and Kane looking to go on the LTIR, could the oilers acquire another player in LTIR to expand the pool-combing Kane and player x's cap hits to exceed the cap?
Answer
Acquiring an injured player does not generally help a team's cap situation. If the Oilers added a $3M player that's injured, their total team cap hit would go up by $3M, and then they could potentially exceed the cap by $5M, so the net benefit is 0. The only time it can potentially benefit a team is when they're setting their initial LTIR capture. You can read more about that here: https://puckpedia.com/salary-cap/LTIR. If the team is setting their opening season LTIR by exceeding the cap, they want to be over the cap by as much as possible to the injured players cap hit (1 player or a combination of players). So sometimes it might help to get an injured player that has a different cap hit to make a more optimal initial capture.
