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Zach Hyman is set to make his triumphant return to the lineup on Saturday after suffering a serious wrist injury during Game 4 of the Western Conference Final this past June. Hyman has been on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) since the start of the season. That has allowed the Edmonton Oilers to keep some extra players around to get a longer look at them in regular season action.
Since Hyman is now ready to return, the Oilers had to make some roster moves to become cap compliant to activate Hyman. Those moves were announced on Friday. Ike Howard has been loaned to the Bakersfield Condors, and Troy Stecher has been placed on waivers for the purpose of reassignment to the Condors. Stecher will be removed from the active roster on Saturday whether he gets claimed or not.
LTIR can be confusing and the rules are slightly different this season, so let me explain the math behind why these moves were made.
LTIR is a mechanism that allows teams to carry extra players in case of an injury that keeps a player out of the lineup for more than ten games and 24 days. In years past, the amount of salary cap relief granted for a player on LTIR was calculated by adding the player’s cap hit to the team’s annual cap hit, thereby essentially allowing a team to replace the player’s full salary for the duration of the injury.
This season, it’s slightly different. If a player is not expected to return before the end of the regular season, then the rule is exactly like it was in the past except that the injured player becomes ineligible for the playoffs.
In a situation like Hyman’s where the player returns before the end of the regular season, the maximum value that a team can receive for one player in LTIR relief matches the value of the league’s average salary from the previous season, which was $3,817,293 in 2024-25.
Knowing they would start the season with Hyman on LTIR, the Oilers made their season opening roster submission as close to the salary cap as possible to maximize the amount of LTIR relief they could access. Their season opening roster submission was $834 shy of the salary cap ($95,499,166). When you add Hyman’s LTIR relief to that figure, you get a new upper limit of $99,316,459.
$3,817,293 (Hyman’s LTIR relief) + $95,499,166 (SOR cap hit) = $99,316,459 (Upper limit with Hyman on LTIR)
The Oilers sent James Hamblin down to the Condors and called up Howard and David Tomasek before the first game of the season, but neither Howard nor Tomasek was included on the season opening roster submission.
That’s an important detail because any potential performance bonuses for players on the active roster at the time a team enters LTIR is added up in a performance bonus pool. If the sum of the potential performance bonuses of all players on the roster exceeds the value in the performance bonus pool at any point while the team is in LTIR, then the excess player’s performance bonus is tacked onto his cap hit, which affects the team’s cap hit; or as PuckPedia put it to me on X, it results in a “cap space reduction”.
If that player has potential performance bonuses for multiple years remaining on his contract, the average value of those potential performance bonuses is added to the player’s cap hit, which is a nuance that I learned from PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) on X. Howard’s three-year entry level contract includes these potential performance bonuses:
Year 1: $250k
Year 2: $750k
Year 3: $1M
Total: $2M
Average per year: $666,667
Howard’s normal cap hit is $950k per year, but since he was not included on the season opening roster submission, the average value of his performance bonuses for the three years of his contract ($666,667) was added to his normal $950k, bringing his total cap hit to $1,616,667.
The maximum amount of an individual contract that can be buried in the AHL is $1.15 million for the current season. Tomasek’s cap hit is $1.2 million, so he counted for $50k on the season opening roster.
If you subtract Hamblin’s $775k and add the $1,616,667 and $1.15 million values for Howard and Tomasek being recalled from the AHL as well as Roslovic’s $1.5 million, that put the Oilers’ cap hit at $98,990,834.
$95,499,166 (SOR Cap Hit) – $775,000 (Hamblin) + $1,616,667 (Howard) + $1,150,000 (Tomasek) + $1,500,000 (Roslovic) = $99,040,833 (Annual cap hit)
$99,316,459 (Upper limit with Hyman on LTIR) – $98,990,833 (Annual Cap Hit) = $275,626 (Cap space)
Other players including Jake Walman, Mattias Janmark, Alec Regula, Kasperi Kapanen, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins have all been injured at various points so far this season. The Oilers have been able to use the standard injured reserve to keep the active roster at 23 players without impacting the salary cap situation up until now.
Kapanen was placed on LTIR on November 10, 2025. That added $1.3 million to the available LTIR relief.
$99,316,459 (Upper limit w/Hyman on LTIR) + $1,300,000 (Kapanen) = $100,616,459 (Upper limit w/ Hyman and Kapanen on LTIR)
$100,616,459 (Upper limit w/ Hyman and Kapanen on LTIR) – $98,990,833 (Annual Cap Hit) = $1,625,626 (Cap space)
When a player is activated off of LTIR, the team loses the accompanying LTIR relief; so the Oilers’ upper limit will decrease by $3,817,293 on Saturday when Hyman is activated officially.
$100,616,459 (Upper limit w/ Hyman and Kapanen on LTIR) – $3,817,293 (Hyman’s LTIR relief) = $96,799,166 (Upper limit w/Kapanen on LTIR)
Another way to arrive at that number would be this:
$95,499,166 (SOR Cap Hit) + $1,300,000 (Kapanen) = $96,799,166 (Upper limit w/Kapanen on LTIR)
$96,799,166 is the number the Oilers needed to get under to activate Hyman. To get the amount that they needed to shed, this number was subtracted from the team’s annual cap hit before Friday’s transactions ($98,990,833):
$98,990,833 (Annual cap hit) – $96,799,166 (Upper limit w/Kapanen on LTIR) = $2,191,667 (Amount needed to shed to activate Hyman)
That value was confirmed to me by PuckPedia on X.
Removing Howard ($1,616,667) and Stecher ($787,500) from the roster equals $2,404,167 shed, leaving the Oilers with $212,500 in cap space.
$98,990,833 (Annual cap hit) – $1,616,667 (Howard) – $787,500 (Stecher) = $96,586,666 (Annual cap hit as of Saturday)
$96,799,166 (Upper limit w/Kapanen on LTIR) – $96,586,666 (Annual cap hit as of Saturday) = $212,500 (Cap space)
Kapanen is set to return in early December. The Oilers will have to make another roster move to get below the league’s $95.5 million salary cap to activate Kapanen at that time.
$96,586,666 (Annual cap hit as of Saturday) – $95,500,000 (NHL salary cap) = $1,086,666 (Amount needed to shed to activate Kapanen)
Anyone whose cap hit is less than that amount is safe. Tomasek is the most likely player to be sent down to Bakersfield since he doesn’t require waivers to be sent down; but any player whose cap hit is above $1,086,666 could be waived and demoted. We can’t rule out a trade either.
*All contract data in this piece via PuckPedia.
