The salary cap situation of the Vancouver Canucks isn’t just incredibly complicated, it’s incredibly complicated, and it changes on a literal daily basis.

It can be a lot to keep up with. And try as we might to keep you abreast of it all here at CanucksArmy; by now, we’ve realized that publishing an article each and every time Arshdeep Bains gets sent to or called back from Abbotsford is a bit much.

Fortunately, our friends at PuckPedia have us covered.

Ever since CapFriendly became WashingtonCapitalsFriendly, the folks at PuckPedia have been ably stepping into the void – and stepping up their game all around. There’s now very little about the NHL and its various financial goings-on that cannot be found there if one knows where to look.

Where to look and, in the specific case of the Vancouver Canucks, how to know what you’re looking at.

That’s where we can step in with a little Canucks-specific explainer.

To place you in the proper context of time, these words are being written in the wake of the Canucks’ Thursday night defeat at the hands of the New York Islanders. Friday’s transactions have not been made or announced as of this point, and so Aatu Räty and Jonathan Lekkerimäki remain with the team. Dakota Joshua made his return to the ice on Thursday, coming off the injured reserve (IR). So as of this very moment, the Canucks have an active roster of 13 forwards, eight defenders, two goalies, and just Thatcher Demko on IR.

But add up the average annual value (AAV) (what we traditionally think of as ‘cap hits’) of all 24 of those players – plus the $3,559,167 the Canucks have on the books from Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s buyout and Ilya Mikheyev and Tucker Poolman’s retention, you’ll find it leaves the Canucks with a grand total of $86,764,167 on the books. With the cap ceiling set at $88 million this year, that should leave the Canucks at $1,235,833.

And yet, when we look at the PuckPedia page for the Canucks on this same day, we don’t see that number anywhere on the page.

Why the discrepancy?

The answer lies in the fact that the salary cap is not actually counted annually but instead tabulated daily. Canucks fans should be very comfortable with the concept of accrual by now, but by actually looking at the numbers and how they change on a daily basis, we can really get into the gears of it.

In short, teams are able to spend $88 million total throughout the entire NHL regular season. But what gets counted against that $88 million is the total amount of AAV on the roster on any given day, divided by the number of days in the season (192 for 2024/25).

So, what you see listed there for Projected Cap Space ($1,157,456) is meant to represent how much of that total $88 million the team is estimated to have spent by the end of it all (or, more accurately, how much they are estimated to have not spent).

Projected Cap Space is derived from a combination of how much the team has already spent on each of the days of the season thus far, plus what they would spend on each of the subsequent days of the season if no further roster moves occurred. This won’t actually happen, of course, so the Projected Cap Space number is largely a temporary one – but still a useful measure of how much the Canucks have spent so far.

Eagle-eyed readers no doubt noticed that the Projected Cap Space on PuckPedia right now of $1,157,456 is slightly lower than the $1,235,833 we arrived at by just adding up all the AAVs. What’s the deal with that? Isn’t accrual meant to add cap over time?

Kind of. But what you’re seeing here is a reflection that the Canucks’ daily cap has been a bit higher than it is right now on previous days of the season. Why? In short, Dakota Joshua. He’s been on the books this entire time but stashed on IR, and that’s often required the calling up of an extra forward on game days to cover his absence. Usually, it’s been Bains. So, on many of the previous days of the season, the daily cap has been higher than it is right now due to an extra forward being on the roster.

Now, with Bains still down in Abbotsford and Joshua’s return to action, the amount accrued each day increases, and that Projected Cap Space should rise over time – day by day.

But what can one really do with Projected Cap Space? A lot, as it turns out. Because the cap is calculated daily, that means that when a team adds a new player to the roster, they’re only responsible for a portion of that player’s annual salary (found by dividing their AAV by the number of days left in the season at that point.)

We’ve already shaved considerable days off that 192 total by now. Which means the Canucks could theoretically add a player with an AAV higher than the amount of cap space they appear to have now by a basic count.

PuckPedia also tracks this number, as shown by Current Cap Space. What that means is that the Canucks could add a player to their roster right now (assuming they made roster space) with an AAV of up to $1,443,062 without going ‘over the cap’ (which is probably best understood as ‘having a daily roster that is projected to eventually go over the cap.)

And, really, that’s what accrual gets you. Now, $1,443,062 might not seem like much. But that number only applies if the team adds someone to the roster today. By the 2025 Trade Deadline, the majority of those 192 days will have been peeled off the schedule, and teams are then only responsible for a sliver of an added player’s salary.

The amount of AAV a team could add to its roster as of the Trade Deadline – again, if nothing else changed with the roster between now and then – is recorded by Deadline Cap Space. Right now, PuckPedia has the Canucks at $5,291,226.

That’s enough to fit a very good player, especially if retention enters the picture.

That number will change daily, but if all goes to plan, it should be able to grow over time. That, again, is the whole point of this accrual business.

We don’t have the Friday transactions to use as an example. So, instead, we go back in time to the off-day of Wednesday, during which time the Canucks had sent all three of Bains, Lekkerimäki, and Räty down to Abbotsford.

(Advertisement included in this screenshot not for sponsorship purposes but because it contains the toughest picture of Phil Kessel ever taken.)

With those three off the roster, the Projected Cap Space climbs to $2,574,252 because, at that point, the estimation is based on them staying off the roster from here on out. The same goes for the Current Cap Space of $3,168,311, which means the Canucks could have added a player with an AAV of that to their roster on Wednesday if they wanted…so long as they were fine not having enough space to call Lekkerimäki and Räty back up.

That now-massive $11,768,011 in Deadline Cap Space is, again, a measure of what the Canucks would be able to add then if they kept this same, reduced roster for every day between now and the Trade Deadline. That won’t happen. It didn’t happen, as Lekkerimäki and Räty were indeed recalled ahead of Thursday’s game.

But it’s all about the daily numbers. Transactions might occur each day, and then the estimates will change with them. The only number that really matters is how much the Canucks have spent, and how much they’ll be able to spend.

We won’t know how much the Canucks can add at the Trade Deadline until the Trade Deadline. For now, we can estimate it’s somewhere between the $5,291,226 listed now and the $11,768,011 listed yesterday, but even that’s far from certain, because injuries and the need to cover them may change the picture dramatically.

However, with each day closer to the Trade Deadline, more of those days’ worth of spending gets officially recorded in the books, and the estimates become less estimates and more accuracies. The closer we get to the Trade Deadline, the more real and more consistent that Deadline Cap Space will become.

Which makes PuckPedia the best available resource to keep track of not just those daily transactions that general manager Patrik Allvin and Co. are performing but what they all mean and what they might all add up to in the end.

Supplemented, of course, by the occasional article from CanucksArmy.