You have to assume that Saturday night was one of the greatest nights of Arshdeep Bains’ life. Certainly, of his hockey career.

The Surrey-born 23-year-old scored his first NHL goal, and he did it on home ice with a goal that would prove the game-winner in a 4-3 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Bains was named first star, and got to skate out to the cheers of an adoring and raucous Rogers Arena.

It was real ‘dream come true’ material.

Then, a few short hours later, Bains and teammate Erik Brännström were re-assigned back down to Abbotsford for the second time this week.

What gives? Well, if you don’t understand this process of temporary re-assignments for the purposes of additional cap accrual by now, we’d better make sure you get it by the end of this article. Because, for Bains in particular, this is going to be a season-long occurrence.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way right away: Bains’ play has nothing to do with his ‘demotion.’ Head coach Rick Tocchet had been praising the young forward’s game even before his Saturday night heroics. The same can be said for Brännström, who has received plenty of positive attention from Tocchet and Co. and who – while he didn’t record an actual point – proved instrumental on two Canucks’ goals last night.

Speaking of actual points, the actual point here is that Tocchet has made it clear that if he has the option, he wants both Bains and Brännström on the active roster and in the lineup. Which confirms that their dual demotions this week are related almost entirely to cap management, not performance. Hence, Bains being sent down the morning after the greatest game of his life.

Instead, it all comes down to cap accrual. We’ve already gone to some pretty extreme preseason lengths to explain the whole accrual process, and we’ll refer folks back to that work if they want to gain a more in-depth understanding of the concept. What the Bains and Brännström situation allows us is an in-season case study of the hows and whys of accrual.

To present a rather complicated process as uncomplicatedly as possible, we have to start with the counterintuitive truth that the NHL salary cap is something that is calculated daily. Each day on the NHL’s regular season calendar – and we’re talking all days here, not just game-days – there is a calculation made for a team’s cap hit against the daily allowable cap ceiling. It’s probably easiest to imagine the daily allowable cap as a function of the NHL’s total yearly cap ceiling ($88 million this year) divided by the number of days on the schedule (192 for 2024/25).

Now, the cap hits of the players on the roster are also counted daily, using the same basic formula. And if the daily cap hit of the team is below the daily cap ceiling, the team essentially gets to bank the difference as accrued cap space, to be spent at a later date.

This accrual is also, technically, counted daily. So, if a team’s total cap hit (meaning the combined yearly AAVs of the players on its roster) were to be $87 million, that team would be display as being $1 million under the cap of $88 million, but would accrue about $5,208 per day ($1 million/192) for as long as they continued to be in that situation.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it adds up. That daily adding up is exactly why the Canucks have been sending Bains and Brännström down to Abbotsford in between game-days.

Let’s do some quick estimations.

On Saturday night, with both Bains and Brännström on the roster and on the ice, the Canucks had a roster totalling $87,605,097 in annual cap hits. That’s just $394,903 below the cap, which divided by 192 gives the Canucks a daily accrual amount of just $2,057.

Sunday morning, the Canucks sent down Bains ($816,667 AAV) and Brännström ($900K AAV). That reduced their Sunday cap hit to $85,888,430, which is now a full $2,111,570 under the ceiling. Divide that amount by 192, and the Canucks are now banking about $10,998 per day.

There’s no real purpose in estimating what that will add up to by deadline day, as the amount changes daily. But it’s that it adds up that really matters, in the end.

Now, given that the Canucks play the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night, one has to assume that Bains and Brännström will be recalled and inserted back into the lineup as of Monday morning. So, that $10K amount will only be accrued on Sunday. But the same amount was also accrued on Thursday and Friday of this past week, during Bains and Brännström’s previous demotion.

Then the Canucks are back down to that $2,057 accrual for Monday. Then, if nothing changes, we can probably expect Bains and Brännström to be sent back down to Abbotsford for Tuesday’s off-day, before being recalled yet again on Wednesday in time to face the New Jersey Devils.

It occurs to us at this point that we’re only really covering the team side of the finances here, and that’s not the only consideration. Brännström is fortunate enough to have a one-way contract, which means he is paid the same whether he is in the NHL or assigned to the minors. This back-and-forth business doesn’t impact his bottom-line.

Not so for Bains. He’s still on his entry-level contract, which is two-way, and his salary while assigned to the minors is just $70,000.

That means that when Bains is on the NHL roster, he’s making about $4,253 a day, and then when he’s been assigned to Abbotsford, he’s down to just $365 a day. We don’t imagine we’ll any complaints from Bains on this front, but it’s worth mentioning that the guy is going to be making a few grand less on Sunday than he did Saturday.

So, how long will this whole accrual business be a thing? The short answer is: all season, for as long and as often as the option is available.

Right now, the Canucks can pull this off because, despite the fact that they have both Dakota Joshua and Thatcher Demko on IR, they’re still under the cap. Joshua and Demko’s absences open up roster spaces, but those roster spaces don’t need to be filled on non-gamedays. That, in turn, allows for the yo-yoing of folks like Bains and Brännström.

For Bains, this could be a year-long endeavour. He’s currently exempt from waivers until he’s completed three professional seasons (he is currently in his third) or has played 80 NHL games (he currently has 12).

Technically speaking, if Bains dressed in 68 of the Canucks’ remaining 75 games this year, he’d lose his waiver exemption sometime in March or April. But he’s unlikely to dress that often, and so we can count on Bains being exempt – and thus eligible for endless demotions and promotions – for the entirety of the 2024/25 season.

Not so for Brännström. A veteran of 270 NHL games going back to the 2018/19 season, Brännström is very much not exempt from waivers. We know that, as the Canucks already waived him once this year, moments after acquiring him from Colorado. He passed through unclaimed.

And that, having passed through waivers unclaimed, created a temporary waivers-exemption for Brännström. When a player ‘clears’ waivers, they can be assigned and re-assigned freely thereafter until they have spent either 30 cumulative days on an NHL roster, or played in ten NHL games.

Brännström, who has played in just four games for the Canucks and who is now consistently being sent down on off-days, will take a while before he needs to be put on waivers again. At that point, we have to assume the Canucks will either make a permanent space for him on their roster or have already snuck him back down to Abbotsford prior.

The only thing that’s really going to get in the way of this accrual yo-yoing is roster space. Joshua is expected back within a matter of weeks. When he is activated, he’ll need a spot on the active roster. That probably means one of Bains or Brännström being demoted yet again, but this time they won’t be instantly recalled on game-days, because their space on the 23-player active roster will now be occupied by Joshua.

To be clear, this doesn’t prevent the Canucks from accruing. Joshua’s cap hit has been counting against the books all along, so if he returns to the lineup and, say, Bains is sent down, then Bains’ AAV still comes off the books and that amount begins to be accrued daily.

The difference here is in having the space to bring Bains back up for the next game day.

In other words, until Joshua returns to the lineup – and presumably during any other lengthy player absences throughout the season – we can expect the Canucks to take advantage of their re-assignments in order to accrue more daily cap. Really, there’s no reason not to, and the potential benefits of having more money to spend when the 2025 Trade Deadline rolls around speak for themselves.