The latest injuries to defensemen Jordie Benn and Carl Dahlstrom could hurt Toronto’s depth but can also provide some short-term relief to their salary cap crunch.
Long before the Toronto Maple Leafs had to worry about fitting in defenseman Rasmus Sandin, the club found themselves over the 2022-23 NHL salary cap of $82.5 million.
UPDATE: Sandin agreed to terms on a two-year, $2.8 million contract on Thursday morning.
While some suggested the club would have to make a trade or two, the injuries that have piled up in the last week should help the team find some temporary relief.
Many of the Toronto’s injuries do not have a long-term time frame in place. But some do. The most notable one being defenseman Timothy Liljegren.
The Swede had hernia surgery before training camp opened last week and given his timeline of a mid-November return, his $1.4 million salary cap hit is likely to be placed on long-term injured reserve (LTI) when the club makes moves before the Oct. 11 deadline.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that defensemen Jordie Benn (groin) and Carl Dahlstrom (shoulder) were expected “to miss some time” by Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe following the club’s 3-0 victory against the Montreal Canadiens.
Although both players were long shots to make the team, their respective $750k cap hit can still be placed on long-term injured reserve to create an additional $1.5 million in LTI space.
Both players will be evaluated on Thursday, but a timeframe longer than 10 games and 24 days (the minimum for LTI exception) will certainly prime those players to be placed on that list.
Although the club has injuries to center John Tavares (minimum three weeks with an oblique strain), Adam Gaudette (day-to-day, shoulder), Jake Muzzin (back discomfort) and Pierre Engvall (foot, ankle), it’s unlikely any of those injuries could provide the Maple Leafs some relief in a form of LTI.
But Joseph Woll’s injury (shoulder) and Mikhail Abramov (back) might provide additional relief. Woll’s $766,667 cap hit and Abramov’s $810k cap hit could further add to an LTI pool that might be as low as $1.4 million to as high as $4,476,667 in exception to the cap.
Toronto is roughly $1.5 million over the cap with a roster of 22 players according the PuckPedia.com.
The downside to this, other than being without the services of the mentioned players, is the club would have to find space when players are ready to come back from LTI. In addition to that, the Leafs would not be able to save cap space in the form of daily cap accrual, making it more difficult to take on additional salary come trade deadline.
But this is just some of the helpful math that is at play for the Maple Leafs given the state of some of their injuries. Outside of Liljegren, none of the players that may find themselves on LTI were projected to be in the opening-night lineup.
Engvall is scheduled to be re-evaluated on Oct. 3. Provided they good some good news on that front, he could help the Leafs and possibly return in time for the club’s season opener on Oct. 12. Toronto needs to be cap compliant by Oct. 11 and there are several other permutations that can happen between now and then that help the club formulate their roster.
But as was the case last year when Ilya Mikheyev suffered an injury in the final pre-season game that kept him out for a couple of months, these are the factors during the pre-season that come into play, helping the club stay the course and not force a trade for the sake of it.
There is still two weeks and five pre-season games left to play. The makeup of the roster is bound to change several times over.