The 2017 trade deadline has come and gone, and aside from a few depth moves, the Leafs more or less stood pat. This is interesting given the speculation that the Leafs would yield that massive $13.55 million LTIR overage to take on a slew of bad contracts in exchange for all sorts of assets.

The existence of this overage wasn’t known to Leafs nation until James Mirtle and Chris Johnston both reported on February 16th that the Leafs had placed Nathan Horton, Joffrey Lupul, and Stephane Robidas on Long-Term Injured Reserve early on in the season.

Though it was long speculated that the Leafs would eventually do that to the inhabitants of "Robidas Island" who had been neither seen or heard from since before training camp, the assumption was that the players were merely on Injured Reserve.

IR and LTIR

To clarify the difference, placing a player on Injured Reserve is simply a way to not have them count on the active roster, which must be under 24 players. LTIR allows the team to replace the injured player by allowing the team to exceed the cap by the necessary amount. So, if the Leafs put Horton, Robidas, and Lupul, that would mean they can get an additional amount of cap space equal to all three players’ combined cap hits, right?

Actually, no. Well, maybe not. It’s tough to say.

There are two things to know about LTIR in order to understand the Leafs cap situation. The first is that it was never written with a mind toward permanently injured players — the assumption was that those players would simply retire. Rather, it was written as though a team had built a roster that it intends on playing the season with, and then experiences an injury to a player. LTIR allows the team to replace that player with an equal player for the duration of their injury.

The second thing is that the LTIR formula is fairly simple — when the player is injured, whatever the team’s cap situation is, they will always be allowed to spend exactly as much money is need to replace the player’s salary. There are four factors to keep in mind: 1) the Team’s Averaged Salary, which is a fancy way of saying their projected season cap hit if all the player’s on the active roster play out the season, 2) the Upper Limit, or cap ceiling, 3) the amount of space between the Averaged Salary and the Upper Limit, otherwise called cap space, and 4) the salary of the player.

For a more in-depth explanation of LTIR, you can view the CBA section illustrating the exemptions (Page 290 of the CBA) or read the Maple Leafs Hotstove breakdown from when the Leafs first acquired Nathan Horton.

A quick hypothetical illustration: The Upper Limit is $73 million, and the Leafs have a Averaged Salary of $72 million. On the first day of the season, Stephane Robidas, who has an AAV of $3 million, gets injured for the year and the Leafs place him on LTIR. They are now allowed to replace $3 million in salary; the first $1 million counts as regular money against the salary cap, and then the Leafs can exceed the Upper Limit by $2 million.

This is why, if you are a team like the Leafs with perma-injured players, it makes sense to maximize the LTIR rules by building a roster with an Averaged Salary as close to the Upper Limit as possible. So if the Leafs in our scenario had a team with an Averaged Salary of $73 million, by putting Robidas on LTIR they have $3 million in cap space throughout the season.

Note the important part here: no matter what, the Leafs STILL have $3 million in cap space throughout the season. It’s just that in our second scenario they also added an extra player worth $1 million beforehand.

Here’s where things get weird...

The issue is no team before now has placed two or more players on LTIR simultaneously, and the CBA is really unclear on how to calculate the available cap space available in such a scenario. I’ll explain using the Leafs actual approximate cap situation at the beginning of the season.

The Leafs Averaged Salary on October 24th was about $72.8 million according to CapFriendly, before they placed the three players on LTIR (NOTE: I have no idea where CapFriendly got this date from) If they place Lupul on LTIR that day, then they are allowed to exceed the Upper Limit of $73 million by $5.0 million (I’m rounding out Lupul’s AAV, but just know that the first $0.2 million eats up the remaining cap space, and the next $5 million is overage), meaning they now have $5.2 million to spend as they see fit for the rest of the season.

If they then immediately place Robidas on LTIR, the formula outlined in the CBA doesn’t suggest that they now have $8 million in cap space. Remember, in our illustration from before, the player’s salary eats up the team’s available cap space until it hits the Upper Limit, at which point they can exceed the Upper Limit by the remainder of the player’s AAV.

But if the Leafs already have $5.2 million in available cap space, then Robidas’ $3 million AAV doesn’t exceed that number. The Leafs still just have $5.2 million in cap space. The same goes if Nathan Horton is immediately placed on LTIR. His $5.2 million AAV (again, rounding) that they need to replace doesn’t exceed the Leaf’s available cap space.

This idea has been explored before, and WingingItMowtown concluded that the only way to maximize having multiple players on LTIR is to replace each player’s cap hit before putting the next one on LTIR. For example, let’s say in our illustration that the Leafs signed a player with an AAV of $5.2 million immediately after placing Lupul on LTIR.

If the then immediately put Robidas on LTIR, they can replace an additional $3 million because they no longer have any cap space. Then they could sign another player with a $3 million cap hit, and place Horton on LTIR. Now they’ve replaced a combined $8.2 million in salary, and still have $5.2 million in cap space.

However, obviously, this did not happen (I’m sure we would have heard about it), so it appears that the Leafs placing all three players on LTIR at once was fairly redundant in terms of creating cap space. At most, the Leafs gained $5.3 million in cap space ($5.3 million being Horton’s cap hit, the most expensive of the three players), at least according to my understanding of the LTIR rules based on the CBA.

My caveat is that the Leafs obviously did this for a reason, so it’s quite possible that they know something I don’t that gives them a different interpretation of the LTIR rules. However, the interpretation I’ve laid out here is, at least in my opinion, more consistent with the actual purpose of the LTIR exemptions.

I have reached out to CapFriendly and other sources for help to figure out a way that the Leafs actually could have gained a combined $13.55 million in cap space by placing all three players on LTIR simultaneously, and I will post any updated information that I get.