Hockey is obviously a physical sport which means there are plenty of injuries in the NHL. While some injuries are minor and can just require a game or two in the press box to feel better and get back into the lineup.
Other injuries, however, require longer to heal. This means that teams need to juggle their lineup. Besides having a salary cap that handcuffs which players a team can call up, there is also a roster limit of 23 active players. So there are two different designations for injured players that help the team with these problems: Injured Reserve (IR) and Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR).
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Injured Reserve
This is the less severe of the two injury list designations. When a player is put on IR, it means that they cannot play for at least 7 days. They can still participate in things like practice and meetings, as long it isn’t anything competitive.
Injured Reserve frees up a spot on the roster to move in another player. It does not, however, free up any cap space. So the salary of the player on IR still counts toward the salary cap limit. This is more of a temporary designation for a player expected to come back soon. It can also be used for illness.
Long-Term Injured Reserve
There are stricter rules when it comes to LTIR so that teams can’t take advantage of it. When a player is placed on LTIR, they will miss at least 10 games AND 24 days of the NHL season. Those days don’t count days when the league is “off” like the three-day holiday break at Christmas or the All-Star Break.
When a player is moved to LTIR, their salary is still counted toward the team’s total cap space, but it allows the team to exceed the salary cap by that same amount. For instance, if a player making $1 million is put on LTIR, the team may exceed the salary cap by calling up another player who makes $1 million or less.
However, if the team has available cap space, that will count toward the “LTIR Pool.” If a team has $500,000 of cap space and moves that player making $1 million to LTIR, they can only exceed the cap by $500,000 because they already have available space. If this is the case, teams will usually move players around to get as close to the salary cap before moving a player to LTIR. The team will also have to move players around to take a player off of LTIR so that they don’t exceed the cap.
Season Opening Injured Reserve
There is another interesting type of IR that has to do with preseason. There is always a chance that players will be hurt during training camp or preseason games. If that happens, the team cannot send them to their AHL or ECHL affiliates. The team needs to wait until the player is well before re-assigning them.
This was put into place so that teams have a place to put injured players who aren’t going to make the NHL team. This way it doesn’t affect the salary cap or the 23-player roster limit.
There are a few rules, however. The player must be on a two-way contract, was on an NHL roster for less than 50 games the last season, and was injured before the opening roster. If a player was injured with a hockey-related injury outside of the NHL in the past season, their salary does not count toward the cap.
