The only thing that made less sense than starting Nicklas

Grossmann in the Calgary Flames’ first game of the regular season in Edmonton

last night was signing the brick-footed defenceman altogether.

But, as Brad Treliving explained hours after inking Grossmann

on Tuesday, there was a definite method to his madness. Ladislav Smid won’t

play for the Calgary Flames this season, but they’re still on the hook for his $4 million salary and $3.5 million cap hit. On the surface, there’s a

simple solution to this: throw him on long term injured reserve and redeem the $3.5 million in cap space to spend on a new shiny toy!

Not so fast.

We all laughed at the Flames when they submitted their

official roster to the NHL office on Tuesday with cap space totalling just over

$8,000. We also scratched our heads because the reason they had

zero breathing room under the cap was their bewildering signing of Grossmann which not only erased any space under the cap, but also muddied an

already unclear situation on the Flames’ blueline.

What the heck, Brad? We thought you were a wizard genius?

Well, he is. As it turns out, LTIR space is only afforded to

the teams that actually need that space. As Cap Friendly explains, in order to get full LTIR relief, a team needs to have literally zero

cap space when they designate that player for LTIR, because the cap savings you

receive is calculated under this formula:

LTIR Cap Relief = Cap Hit of LTIR’d Player – (Salary Cap –

Current Team Salary Total)

Meaning, every penny the Flames are under the salary cap

when they LTIR Smid is deducted from the savings they would receive from his

contract.

So, considering Brett Kulak and his $656,666 cap hit made

the roster, that left the team just a shade over $575,000 in cap space to play

with. Under normal circumstances, the Flames would take it and start the season

as is. However, this season, if they did that, then when they eventually LTIR

Smid, they would’ve received only $2.925M of his $3.5M in cap relief. Thus,

signing Grossmann to his gross, but very specific contract.

“You’re adding a contract to help your cap situation,” Brad

Treliving noted on Sportsnet 960 after the signing.

My initial reaction to learning this quirk was “Why not just

call up someone from the farm to fill that extra space?” Well, as it turns out,

nobody comes that cheap. Any call up from Stockton would put the Flames over

the salary cap, thus the need to sign somebody from the outside to a very

specific deal.

At first, it sounded like the Flames were really high on

Lauri Korpikoski and might’ve actually gone down that road had the Dallas Stars

not stepped in with a contract offer – and a more lucrative one, at that. Since

Grossmann had history with Gulutzan and had been with the team since the

beginning of the season, the match was there. Plus, the Flames can option

Grossmann to the AHL and regain the cap space in full should they choose to do

so down the road. It’s not a good match by any means, but one can understand the logic thinking behind it.

So that is the reason the Calgary Flames signed the God-awful

Nicklas Grossmann to a contract. As for why the Calgary Flames played the God-awful Nicklas Grossmann in Edmonton to start the

season? I don’t think anyone – Glen Gulutzan included – will ever have a good

answer to that. Let’s just hope it never happens again.





