January 17, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

Ladies and gentlemen, Evander Kane is back! Kane is ready to return from his unfortunate and gruesome wrist injury that has kept him out of the lineup since November 8, 2022. He had 13 points in 14 games this season before the injury.

Kane brings elite level offensive production and some stability to the top six. Kane’s return means one less winger has to play above where he should be playing. His swagger, toughness, and willingness to play on the edge are all ingredients the Oilers need more of these days. It suffices to say that his return is more than welcomed.

Much had been made about the cap gymnastics that would be required to activate Kane from LTIR. There were a few different scenarios that could’ve played out, many of them requiring placing players on waivers. However, nobody was placed on waivers on Monday, so another alternative was used. This is how the Edmonton Oilers were able to activate Kane from LTIR on Tuesday.

Related: The Legitimacy of Trading for Jakob Chychrun

First, the club sent Markus Niemelainen back to Bakersfield on Monday. His cap hit is the same as Vincent Desharnais, but they chose to keep Desharnais up. That $762,500 cap spending decrease brought the Oilers’ cap hit down to $91,591,833.

The Oilers placed Ryan Murray and Kailer Yamamoto on LTIR on Tuesday. Murray has been dealing with a back issue for most of this season. This has been an issue for Murray for most of his career. Yamamoto’s issue is uncertain. Jay Woodcroft said that Yamamoto declared himself unable to go against San Jose last Friday, and now he’s on LTIR. 

It’s been a tough season for Yamamoto. He went into the boards awkwardly and hard against Vancouver in the preseason. He missed the first game of the season, then played in the next 13 games. After that, he missed the next 11 games. Now he’ll be out until February 12 at the earliest because he has to miss at least 10 games and 24 days as a result of being placed on LTIR. The random timing of his injuries with no video of potential plays he could’ve been hurt during makes me think that he’s dealing with post concussion symptoms, but I have no concrete information on that.

Here’s a quick refresher on how LTIR works since I know it’s confusing. An injured player’s cap hit ALWAYS counts towards the cap. When a player is placed on LTIR, the value of his cap hit goes into the LTIR pool. That value is added to the value of the team’s total cap spending at the time when the first player was put on LTIR that season, otherwise known as the ACSL (Accruable Cap Space Limit). 

The ACSL for the Oilers this season is $82,499,833 as per CapFriendly. If you add up the cap hits for Kane, Klefbom, and Smith, you get a sum of $11,492,000. That value was the team’s LTIR pool while Kane was on LTIR.

If you add up the cap hits for Klefbom, Smith, Murray, and Yamamoto, you get a sum of $10,217,000. That is the new LTIR pool for the Oilers with those players on LTIR. You add the LTIR pool value to the ACSL to get a new cap ceiling of $92,716,833.

Remember, an injured player’s cap hit ALWAYS counts towards the cap. None of today’s LTIR related transactions had any impact on cap spending. The value of the LTIR pool decreased by $1,275,000 after today’s transactions. In other words, the Oilers’ cap ceiling decreased by $1,275,000 today.

If you take the new cap ceiling of $92,716,833 and subtract the team’s total cap hit of $$91,591,833, you get a value of $1,125,000. That means that the Oilers have $1,125,000 in cap space right now.

However, we have to remember that the LTIR pool will decrease by the value of Yamamoto’s cap hit whenever he’s ready to return. If you subtract that $1,125,000 in cap space from Yamamoto’s cap hit of $3.1 million, you get $1,975,000. That’s the amount that the Oilers will have to shed to activate Yamamoto from LTIR.

The same logic applies to Murray and his $750,000 cap hit. If we add that to the $1,975,000 needed to activate Yamamoto from LTIR, then we get a value of $2,725,000 that will need to be removed from the roster when both Yamamoto and Murray are ready to return.

That leads me to the next newsworthy event of the day. We learned that Jesse Puljujarvi will be a healthy scratch against the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday night. Puljujarvi has increased his production from when he made comments to Finnish media about his situation in December, but not by enough to live up to his cap hit. I feel that they’re spreading the healthy scratches around to keep everyone involved, but a healthy scratch will only serve to increase tensions between the Oilers and the Puljujarvi camp.

The Oilers could free up the required amount of cap space to activate Murray and Yamamoto from LTIR by trading Puljujarvi or Warren Foegele for picks or prospects. They could also do it by waiving and sending players to Bakersfield. They could also hope for another conveniently timed long term injury to a player with a cap hit north of $2,725,000.

Related: What Lies Ahead After Puljujarvi’s Comments

It’s exciting to have Kane back, but today’s moves have only kicked the can down the road approximately another month. The cap problem hasn’t been resolved yet. For now, I’m just going to kick my feet back and see how things shake out.