Death, taxes, and the Vancouver Canucks exceeding the salary cap ceiling through the use of LTIR relief space.

Some things, it seems, are truly inevitable.

GM Patrik Allvin and Co. made a good run at starting the 2024/25 season under the cap. They announced it as a sincere intention. They spent the summer signing value contracts. They came out of the 2024 offseason in better financial shape as a franchise than they’ve been in since the cap era began.

Then, the injuries began to mount.

We always knew that Tucker Poolman would not play this season. The Canucks were ready and able to keep his full $2.5 million cap hit on the books via regular IR, as opposed to long-term injured reserve. They were that far under the cap already.

Then came news that Thatcher Demko would not be ready to start the year. His $5 million cap hit, while a bargain, would prove much more difficult to fit onto IR, especially with a replacement goalie required. And yet, the Canucks would still have been able to stay under the cap with some clever manoeuvring.

Then came the announcement of Dakota Joshua’s cancer diagnosis, treatment, and subsequent recovery. With Joshua’s new $3.25 million cap hit in hand, that really started to stretch the books.

And yet, the Canucks could have still pulled it off.

A lineup of 12 active forwards (Elias Pettersson, JT Miller, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland, Danton Heinen, Teddy Blueger, Pius Suter, Kiefer Sherwood, Nils Höglander, Daniel Sprong, Nils Åman), seven active defenders (Quinn Hughes, Filip Hronek, Carson Soucy, Tyler Myers, Vincent Desharnais, Derek Forbort, Noah Juulsen), two active goaltenders (Kevin Lankinen and Arturs Silovs) with all three of Poolman, Demko, and Joshua on IR – and with Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Ilya Mikheyev’s dead cap on the books – adds up to a cap hit of about $87,909,167, which is $90,833 under the cap.

That small amount of cap space wouldn’t add up to much accrual. And it would require the Canucks to start the season with a roster of just 21 players, without any space to call anyone up until Joshua returned.

But it was doable.

Any further injuries, however, would put the Canucks into an even tighter spot. And further injuries have occurred.

Teddy Blueger’s status remains a little up in the air following an offseason procedure. He’s recently become an active participant in practice, but it is unclear whether he’ll actually be game-ready by the season opener.

More recently, Pius Suter became injured during a tangle with Connor McDavid and Corey Perry during Monday’s exhibition match.

If either of the two is still injured come October 9, the Canucks are essentially faced with a difficult choice: start the season with a roster of just 20 active and healthy players – far from ideal, especially with the team heading on a four-game road trip in the second week – or give up on the accrual game and once again embrace the use of LTIR relief space.

It seems very likely that the team will choose the latter.

Evidence of this may be found in Tuesday’s cutting of one Phil di Giuseppe. As per usual, Di Giuseppe had made a good showing in camp, and remained one of head coach Rick Tocchet’s personal favourites. In fact, when asked about Di Giuseppe being placed on waivers, Tocchet hinted that it was a cap-related move, telling media “There’s numbers involved and a lot more to it – the cap, LTIR – it’s over my head.”

Credit where credit is due: Sportnet’s Satiar Shah figured it out, opining on Canucks Central that Di Giuseppe had been sent down instead of the likes of Aatu Räty and Arshdeep Bains specifically because he had a lower cap hit than they did.

And though this may seem counter-intuitive, after checking the numbers, Shah seems to have absolutely nailed this one.

It all comes back to a very familiar game for this management group – the game of maximizing LTIR relief space.

If you’ve mercifully forgotten about this intricacy of the salary cap era, don’t worry. We haven’t. It’s burned into our brains.

We’ll call your attention back to the outset of the 2022/23 season, a point at which the then-new Canucks front office made headlines by putting together what some called “the perfect opening day roster.”

It’s a lot to get into, so we’ll keep the recap of this concept brief:

For a fuller explanation, just re-read that article we linked above. In any case, if either Blueger or Suter (or both) are unable to start the season, the Canucks are right back onto their hunt for the magic number and the perfect opening day roster.

The team will almost certainly seek to avoid placing any of Suter, Blueger, or Joshua on LTIR, as it is hoped those players will return within the first month of action. They’ll also try to avoid placing Demko there if at all possible.

That leaves Poolman and his $2.5 million cap hit as the obvious candidate to go on LTIR for the time being, and thankfully that should give the Canucks all the extra space they need, so long as they maximize it.

Again, Sat Shah had it right. With just the players remaining on the roster right now, and no further cuts, the Canucks are again set up to come mighty close to that magic number.

Right now, the roster features 27 players made up of 15 forwards (Pettersson, Miller, Boeser, DeBrusk, Garland, Joshua, Heinen, Blueger, Suter, Sherwood, Höglander, Sprong, Åman, Räty, Bains), nine defenders (Hughes, Hronek, Soucy, Myers, Desharnais, Forbort, Juulsen, Friedman, Poolman) and three goaltenders (Lankinen, Silovs, Demko).

That roster totals up to $90,337,510, or approximately $2,337,510 over the cap. The team could then place Joshua, Demko, and one or both of Blueger and Suter on IR, and follow up by placing Poolman on LTIR, locking in that $2,337,510 as relief space.

That’s good, but Emilie Castonguay and Co. can and have done better.

Time for a major mea culpa: we made too big of a deal out of the importance of having Jonathan Lekkerimäki on the opening day roster. We made the mistake of thinking that the rules surrounding performance bonuses on contracts applied in all situations, but then subsequently learned that they only apply to teams using LTIR relief space to exceed the cap.

Well, sometimes one stumbles into being accidentally correct. Now that the Canucks project to start the season “in LTIR,” suddenly it becomes a priority to get Lekkerimäki on the opening day roster all the same. In doing so, they’d lock in a performance bonus cushion that would remain for as long as they stayed in LTIR, essentially allowing them to call Lekkerimäki or anyone else with performance bonuses up at any point in time.

Thankfully, having Lekkerimäki on this opening day roster serves a dual purpose, and that’s moving the team even closer to that magic number. They just need to complete a paper transaction before setting the opening day roster in which Bains is swapped out for Lekkerimäki. Bains’ cap hit, without bonuses, is $816,676, whereas Lekkerimäki’s is $918,333. In making that swap, the Canucks would move to $2,439,167 over the cap, and all that much closer to the magic number. No waivers required.

(On this note, another mea culpa: Our plan to swap Lekkerimäki for Silovs, which we previously wrote about, won’t work due to an obscure NHL rule regarding goalies on opening day rosters. In any case, the Bains-for-Lekkerimäki swap gets them closer to the magic number anyway.)

Alternatively, if the team wanted to risk waivers, they could swap Friedman for Lekkerimäki instead, which would result in an opening day roster that is $2,480,843 over the cap, which is tantalizing close to Poolman’s magic $2.5 million number.

In fact, whichever method they go with, they’re a little closer to the magic number than it looks. That’s because Akito Hirose suffered a concussion in preseason action, and will thus start the year on Season Opening Injured Reserve. That will result in a pro-rated cap hit based on how many days Hirose spent on the Canucks’ roster last season. It wasn’t a lengthy stint, and will thus result in a hit somewhere in the tens of thousands. All of which just serves to put the Canucks even closer to that magic number.

They might not hit it exactly as they did two years back. But they’ll come close.

Afterward, Lekkerimäki can be safely tucked back down to Abbotsford, and the opening day roster can transition into the opening night roster, which should look something like this:

Höglander- Räty-Garland

That roster has it all, in terms of making the most of the current situation. It maximizes LTIR space, it contains a maximal performance bonus cushion (thanks to the Lekkerimäki papering), and it even contains a little wiggle room in case Bains or Räty need to be swapped around for a slightly more expensive call-up.

And best of all? It allows the Canucks the option to work toward getting back under the cap eventually, at which point they can indeed start accruing cap space on a daily basis. All that would require would be no further injuries, and the demotion of extras like Bains, Friedman, and Silovs whenever the likes of Joshua and Demko make their returns.

Or, the Canucks can give up on the accrual business and accept one more season spent “in LTIR.” The benefit there is what you see above, a deep 23-player roster that allows for plenty of internal injury coverage without losing the ability for Tocchet to roll four lines.

And that’s really not a bad outcome to a situation borne from offseason injuries to key players, in the end.