March 11, 2023 by Ryan Lotsberg

The Vegas Golden Knights have been the talk of the league during the trade deadline period. The defending Stanley Cup champions made three significant additions this week in large part because Mark Stone was placed on LTIR with a lacerated spleen. Stone’s injury will keep him out of the lineup for the rest of the regular season, which allowed the Golden Knights to be aggressive at the trade deadline.

Many fans of opposing teams are beyond frustrated that the Golden Knights find themselves in this situation again. This is the fourth time that Stone has found himself on LTIR since being traded to the Golden Knights in 2019. The last three instances have occurred shortly before the trade deadline in each of the last three seasons including this season:

2022 – Placed on LTIR February 14, Activated April 12

2023 – Placed on LTIR February 20, Activated April 20

2024 – Placed on LTIR March 4, will miss the regular season

Stone was placed on LTIR prior to the trade deadline in each of the last three seasons, and he was activated for the first game of the playoffs in the last two seasons. The recovery timeline for Stone’s current injury makes it unlikely that he will be ready for the first game of the playoffs, but he could potentially return during the postseason. The timing of it all has drawn the suspicion and frustration of many fans of opposing teams around the league.

The conspiracy theorists are out in full force on this situation, and I get their frustration. The Golden Knights haven’t done anything that is against the rules though. Other teams have been in situations like this before. The 2015 Chicago Blackhawks and the 2021 Tampa Bay Lightning had similar situations with high priced star players in those Stanley Cup winning seasons. Players need to be activated from the LTIR once they are deemed ready to play, but it is incredibly tough to prove cap circumvention has occurred through holding a healthy player out of the lineup just to be able to load up at the trade deadline. It’s impossible to know when a player is ready to return from certain injuries, like a back issue or a lacerated spleen.

The conspiracy theorists out there are working with circumstantial evidence, not tangible evidence. If you can show me tangible evidence that says that Stone was ready to play prior to game one of the playoffs last year, then I can get on board with the cries about cap circumvention. The timing of Stone’s LTIR stints is certainly damning, but there is not hard evidence to prove that any cap circumvention has occurred. They could have forced Stone to return BEFORE his injury was fully healed last year because they wanted him in the lineup for the playoffs for all we know. The Golden Knights are reaping the benefits of paying an injury prone star player big money.

A lot of fans are simply frustrated at the rules surrounding LTIR and the playoffs being what they are. I understand being frustrated at that. It would be nice to have a solution to prevent teams from loading up for the playoffs when LTIR relief is involved. 

One solution would be to implement a rule where a game day roster for a playoff game has to be under the regular season salary cap, which is an idea that Holland pitched and had a lot of support for at the 2022 NHL league meetings. That would still allow teams to load up at the trade deadline, but they would have to make difficult roster choices during the playoffs. The reality is that the Golden Knights didn’t ice a roster that would’ve been over the salary cap for a single game during last year’s playoffs. They certainly will this season if Stone comes back to the lineup in the postseason though.

Another proposed solution that I’ve heard is to make a rule that says that a player that finishes the regular season on LTIR is not eligible to return during the first round of the playoffs. That opens up another can of worms with teams that have players that are actually ready to return for the playoffs, but are unable to dress them. That also wouldn’t solve the issue of teams loading up at the trade deadline in my opinion. Those teams would still benefit from the current LTIR rules should they advance past the first round.

The issue is that there is nothing to deter teams from utilizing their LTIR space the way that the Golden Knights did last week. If you want a behaviour to stop, then you need to punish the behaviour. The idea I’m about to propose is not something that could be an option until the next collective bargaining agreement is created, but another potential solution would be to adopt a luxury tax system similar to what MLB and the NBA have.

Basically, teams would be allowed to spend over the salary cap in certain situations (such as being able to bring in a replacement for a player with a long term injury); but they would be forced to pay a tax after spending a certain amount over the cap.

The downside to a luxury tax system is that the richest teams could be permitted to buy championships. The way to combat that would be to make it really difficult for teams to be allowed to exceed the salary cap by only allowing excess cap spending in specific and rare situations. The exception rules would need to be carefully written.

The current LTIR rules actually favour teams that spend more on annual cap hits. Remember that Robin Lehner has been on LTIR since the start of the 2022-23 season. The Golden Knights entered this season knowing that Lehner would be on LTIR for the whole season. The value of a team’s cap hit prior to placing a player on LTIR is known as the ACSL (Accruable Cap Space Limit). Since the Golden Knights did not have a roster under the salary cap on the first day of the regular season when they put Lehner on LTIR, their ACSL for this season is $83.5 million, or the league’s salary cap. They maximized the amount of LTIR relief that they could get by being over the cap on the first day of the regular season. The amount they exceeded the cap was removed from their usable LTIR relief pool. The Edmonton Oilers were in the same situation last season with Oscar Klefbom and Mike Smith on LTIR for the entire regular season.

Anyway, operating in LTIR meant that the Golden Knights could simply tack Stone’s $9.5 million cap hit onto their LTIR relief pool. In a hypothetical situation where a league rule would prohibit teams from exceeding the cap by more than 5% without being subject to a luxury tax, the Golden Knights would have faced a financial penalty for spending more than $87,675,000. PuckPedia has the annual value of the Golden Knights’ roster at $98,635,816. Such a roster would face SUBSTANTIAL financial punishment from the league in a luxury tax system. The Golden Knights still might have chosen to go forward with the trades that they made, but the optics would be improved because the team would be punished for their actions. Such instances would be reduced because not all owners would want to pay the luxury tax.

For what it’s worth, the Toronto Maple Leafs are actually spending more on annual cap hits than the Golden Knights are right now. The difference is that the Leafs didn’t have a $9.5 million player go onto the LTIR list right before the trade deadline for the third year in a row, and the Leafs didn’t add three big names at the trade deadline. It’s clear that the LTIR rules and the playoff salary cap rules need some work.

Look out for part two of this piece where I will talk about the trades that the Vegas Golden Knights have made to use the current LTIR rules to their advantage.

Related: Oilers 2024 Trade Deadline Wrap