One of the challenges that Vancouver had last season was the inability to bank day-to-day cap space with the team needing to use LTIR. While defenseman Tucker Poolman is eligible to go back on there in 2024-25, president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford recently told reporters that their goal is to open up the season without needing to use LTIR, via Postmedia’s Patrick Johnston.
Poolman has spent the majority of his three-year tenure with the Canucks on LTIR, playing only 33 games over that span; all but three of those came back in 2021-22. He has been dealing with migraines throughout his time with Vancouver and isn’t expected to play at all this season. In theory, that could allow the Canucks to spend past the cap by up to his $2.5M cap charge.
However, if they did so, their remaining cap space would be limited to the portion of LTIR space that they’re not spending at the time with no benefit of the value of that space going up as the season goes along. In other words, a team with $1M in LTIR at the start of the season could only add a player making $1M then or at the trade deadline. That was a limiting factor in their efforts to upgrade at the deadline last season.
While it’s understandable that they’d want to stay below the $88M mark in spending and not need LTIR, accomplishing that goal could be a bit tricky. Per PuckPedia, the team projects to have less than $191K to start the season, an amount that wouldn’t be worth anything of consequence at the trade deadline in March. They’d have to go into LTIR as soon as an injury recall was needed.
Accordingly, if their goal is to bank enough flexibility to have more options later on, the Canucks will need to trim from their roster. They could opt to carry a roster with fewer than the maximum of 23 players or attempt to make a cost-cutting trade. One option on that front would be to try to find a taker for Poolman’s contract. Although, with the contract believed to be uninsured and not a lot of teams looking to take on money, the incentive to get a team to take it on would be pricey.
Regardless of what route they go, if the Canucks want to stay out of LTIR, they probably have some work to do in the coming weeks to achieve that objective for any prolonged amount of time.
