The #SeaKraken  have placed forward Jared McCann on injured reserve. Additionally, defenseman Brandon Montour has returned to the team.

This is what I was concerned about.

22 comments

  4. God/karma/The Flying Spaghetti Monster is angry the Mariners were somewhat successful and is taking it out on the Kraken

  5. No need for concern from this. It was likely McCann wasn’t playing today anyway and this is just a paper transaction to free a roster spot for Montour. It doesn’t say anything about McCann’s timeline one way or another

  8. I wonder if it’s the same injury that kept him out of camp and preseason

    But Montour being back is a huge boost for the defense

  10. Glad Montour is back, his presence has been missed – I hope he’s ok. And hopefully McCann heals up quick

  13. This move is probably just to free up the roster spot for Montour to return.

    Going to IR only means a player can’t play for 7 days from the original injury. I think McCann was originally out 5 days ago so he’d need to sit out a couple more days to meet the IR requirement.

    If they put McCann on LTIR then we know the injury is more serious. Hopefully it’s something he can recover from for a game next week.

  18. It’s kind of a miracle we’re doing so well considering how many load-bearing players are injured.

  20. TLDR; you basically can’t rely on IR/LTIR status for any indication of what’s actually going on with a player.

    IR and LTIR both come with a timeout period where the player can’t play. The clock starts from the first game they missed though so you’re allowed to put them onto either one retroactively.

    Hockey is weird in that IR and LTIR aren’t really declared just because of how badly a player is hurt, they get used only once the team is in a position to actually take advantage of the relief that they give. There is no penalty or anything for not using IR/LTIR.

    The only benefit you get from IR is the roster slot back, so a team usually won’t bother putting a player there until they feel like they need the roster spot. If you don’t have someone you really want to call up, you lock the player out and get nothing.

    LTIR gives you cap relief in addition to the roster spot back. You’re allowed to exceed the salary cap by the amount of the players salary minus the amount of cap space you had when you put them on LTIR. You also quit accruing free cap space once you put someone on LTIR. Because of those things teams usually won’t use it until they’re able to do some cap maneuvering to actually take advantage of the pool.

    Right now the Kraken have ~1m in free cap space, so every day we’re accruing some extra cap money that we can use later in the season . Even if we thought McCann was so hurt he couldn’t play for the rest of the season, we still wouldn’t put him on LTIR basically until we had a replacement player lined up and needed the cap. We would probably also go find some ~2mil player and send one of our ELC guys down to hug right up against the salary cap before bringing in the ~5mil replacment for McCann.

    So hypothetically, even if the team knew McCann’s season was over, they wouldn’t put him on LTIR until the day of some trade, signing, waiver claim, whatever, to backfill for him while he can’t play. Until you’re going to actually make some move that would put you over the cap, there is no incentive to do it.

    This isn’t to say I think it’s what’s going on right now or anything, just yapping about the confusing as shit LTIR system.

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