There was some chaos around 5 p.m. ET when the Toronto Maple Leafs announced their opening night roster. Jacob Quillan was on it rather than Easton Cowan, who many expected to be.
It turns out Cowan will be on the roster; they just had to wait a day, as reported by TSN's Chris Johnston.
The Maple Leafs, like all other NHL teams, had to submit their opening-night roster that was salary cap compliant by October 6 at 5 p.m.. Earlier in the day, the Leafs claimed forward Sammy Blais and goaltender Cayden Primeau off waivers.
The Leafs are going to be able to carry the maximum 23 players on their active roster to start the season. Still, they didn't have as much salary cap room as they may have expected due to the news of Scott Laughton being out week-to-week with a lower-body injury and Joseph Woll had to leave the club to tend to a personal matter. Because the timeframe for both players is unknown, they still count toward Toronto's cap calculations.
Marshall Rifai, who injured his wrist in a pre-season game, however, is going to miss the required 10 games and 24 days. The Leafs intend to place the player’s $775,000 salary cap hit on Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR).
So why does this affect Cowan?
When a team prepares to dip into Long-Term Injured Reserve, they aim to try and take advantage of the full cap charge. Doing that, however, requires a team to get as close to the dollar amount possible to get all of it. Quillan has a salary cap hit of $875,000, compared to Cowan’s $873,500. The difference is $1,500.
Under the way the Leafs roster is currently constructed, they have $19,721 in salary cap space. When Rifai is subsequently placed on LTIR, Toronto will have $755,279 in cap room.
One day later, they can swap Quillan for Cowan while maintaining the $755,279 in cap space. Had they kept Cowan on the roster before placing Rifai on LTIR, that number would be $753,779. It’s a small amount, but it matters if the LTIR pool gets deeper should Laughton and/or Woll end up on LTIR.
Ideally, the Leafs would have liked to get that number as close to Rifai’s $775,000 as possible, but there was nobody with a cap hit that was closer without going over. Like a very intricate game of The Price Is Right!
What about the ban on paper moves?
That explains the roster switch, but why were the Leafs allowed to send a player like Cowan down and bring him back up without him playing a game? That brings us to the recent change in the "paper moves" rule.
When the NHL and NHLPA agreed to a CBA extension, they eliminated the use of paper moves. Most notably, this included the requirement for a player to play in at least one AHL game.
While that rule was still in effect, our friends at Puckpedia.com discovered that there was a clarification of the rule to accommodate the AHL season not having started yet. Up until October 10, teams can do paper moves since the AHL season is not underway.
Thus, the Leafs do not need Cowan to play with the Toronto Marlies before bringing him back. If the rule had gone into effect earlier, the Leafs would not have done that and just taken the additional $1,500 hit on LTIR.
While the cap puzzle is solved, Cowan may still be on the outside looking in for a roster spot due to the addition of Blais from waivers. The player won a Stanley Cup with Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube in 2019. Is one practice enough to get into game action?
We’ll find out soon enough.
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