Why Thatcher Demko will be on the Canucks’ opening day roster (and Arturs Silovs won’t), explained

NHL opening day rosters are tricky. How tricky? Trickier than beating Penn and Teller at a game of three-card Monte.

That’s tricky, man.

For whatever reason, the roster a team officially sets as its opening day roster has all sorts of implications both short and long-term. For one, it’s the point at which teams must carefully align their players onto the long-term injured reserve if they intend to go over the cap ceiling and want to maximize their relief space. We all remember the Canucks’ front office, led by AGM Emilie Castonguay, and their impressive performance at the start of the 2022/23 season, at which point they set-up quite literally the perfect cap structure to maximize LTIR benefits for Micheal Ferland’s contract.

A year later, we covered the Canucks’ clever paper-transactioning on their 2023/24 opening day roster as they managed to lock Vasily Podkolzin’s considerable performance bonuses into the “performance bonus relief pool” despite his not making the actual team. They accomplished this by papering down Akito Hirose and Cole McWard, who did not require waivers, and then swapping them back up in exchange for Podkolzin after his bonus cushion was locked in.

This year, for the 2024/25 season, they’re facing the same basic conundrum with Jonathan Lekkerimäki.

We wrote about this last week. In order to get the full explanation of how this all works, it’s probably best to go back and read that piece (or the one about Podkolzin, if you’d rather learn about this concept with the added bonus of hindsight.)

In short, players on entry-level contracts are eligible for certain performance bonuses on their contract. Play 20 games in a season, earn an extra $25,000 – that sort of thing.

The higher a player gets drafted, the more performance bonuses typically get added to their ELC. No surprise, then, that the greatest amount of potential performance bonuses currently attached to a player in the Canucks system are the $475,000 in potential bonuses on Lekkerimäki’s contract.

Those bonuses only get paid out if they’re hit. But how they affect the cap books is a little more complicated.

Essentially, there are two ways it can go. If a player is on the officially-submitted opening day roster at the start of a season, all of their potential performance bonuses go into what is called the “performance bonus relief pool,” but is better described as a “performance bonus cushion.” This amount is locked in at that point.

Beyond then, the bonuses only hit the cap if they are actually achieved. The bonus cushion has the added benefit of being rollover-able, in that if any performance bonuses within the cushion are achieved, but would result in the team going over the cap ceiling, those bonuses are automatically carried over into the next season’s books, to a maximum of 7.5% of the total cap.

This, if you’ll recall, is exactly what happened with Andrei Kuzmenko’s performance bonuses from the 2022/23 season, which rolled over onto the 2023/24 cap.

If, on the other hand, a player with performance bonuses is not on the opening day roster, but is recalled at a later date, then there is no performance bonus cushion to be had. Instead, a team needs to clear enough cap space to accommodate the player’s base salary AND the full sum of all their potential performance bonuses.

That’s far harder to pull off.

To put numbers to it, if Lekkerimäki is on the Canucks’ opening day roster, he has a cap hit of $918,333, and all of his potential performance bonuses go into the relief pool (until they are achieved). If Lekkerimäki is not on the Canucks’ opening day roster, and they want to recall him later, they’d have to make room for a $1,393,333 cap hit, which is room they are not projected to have.

In other words, if they want to retain the right to recall Lekkerimäki at any point in the 2024/25 season, they need to fit him onto the opening day roster.

And it’s not just about Lekkerimäki, by the way. The performance bonus relief pool is a dollar amount, as opposed to being tied to specific bonuses, and Lekkerimäki’s $475,000 in potential bonuses is by far the highest dollar value of anyone in the organization.

Lock in Lekkerimäki’s amount as the performance bonus cushion, and the Canucks have nothing to worry about in recalling anyone else with potential bonuses, including Aatu Raty ($32,500), Max Sasson ($80,000), or the other Elias Pettersson ($80,000).

It’s flexibility, and if it comes for essentially free, there’s no real reason for GM Patrik Allvin and Co. not to take the option.

The only issue comes if there is a cost to the maneuver, and in this case the cost is a spot on the opening day active roster. When we previously wrote on this topic, we suggested that the Canucks might waive an extra skater temporarily, give their spot to Lekkerimäki on the opening day roster, and then swap the two before Game One of the regular season – hoping all the while that the player in question is not claimed on waivers.

We projected that the player in question might be Nils Åman, who definitely stands a risk of being claimed.

Back when it was Podkolzin who needed his performance bonuses locked in, the play was a lot simpler, because the Canucks had two skaters with waiver exemptions on the roster in McWard and Hirose. It was easy enough to paper them down to Abbotsford, paper Podkolzin up, and then swap them back before the season opener.

This year, there are no skaters with waiver-exempt status on the roster. In fact, the only waiver-exempt skater even sniffing a roster spot for the time being is Lekkerimäki himself.

So how will the Canucks accomplish this? Well, you’ve probably already got an idea from the headline. But allow us to lay it out formally.

All they have to do is keep the injured Thatcher Demko on their active roster as they submit their official opening day list.

There is one waiver-exempt player projected to make the active roster, and it’s goaltender Arturs Silovs. But a team also needs to have two goaltenders on its active opening day roster, so just popping Lekkerimäki into Silovs’ spot won’t work.

What the Canucks will need to do is submit an opening day roster that includes the following:

-14 forwards (Pettersson, Miller, Boeser, DeBrusk, Garland, Joshua [on or off IR], Heinen, Blueger, Suter, Sherwood, Höglander, Sprong, Åman [or whoever else], and Lekkerimäki).

-8 defence (Hughes, Hronek, Soucy, Myers, Desharnais, Forbort, Juulsen, and Poolman [on IR]).

-2 goaltenders (Demko, Lankinen)

Again, on paper, this has Silovs temporarily assigned to Abbotsford.

This opening day roster is legal and under the cap ceiling – albeit by only a scant $22,500.

It also only exists on paper.

As soon as this roster is registered with the league, the Canucks can make moves. They’d send Lekkerimäki down to Abbotsford, bring Silovs back up, and place Demko on regular IR. In swapping Lekkerimäki ($918,333) for Silovs ($850,000) they’d gain a little extra cap space, bringing them to $90,833 under the ceiling.

From there, it’d be up to them to decide if they want to waive further players in order to be able to accrue more cap space, or to just roll with what they have.

Either way, Lekkerimäki’s performance bonus cushion of $475,000 would be locked in for the rest of the year, and the Canucks would be free to call up whoever they wanted without having to worry about a compounding cap hit.

And all it costs is a paper transaction for Silovs.

Which means it doesn’t actually cost anything, which means the Canucks are almost guaranteed to do this.

So, when you see Thatcher Demko on the Canucks’ officially-submitted opening day roster, and Arturs Silovs not on it, don’t panic. Canucks management aren’t trying to force an injured Demko to play – not this time, anyway. They’re just engaging in some roster-building shenanigans in order to ensure themselves maximum flexibility throughout the 2024/25 campaign.

Or, put differently, they’re doing their job and doing it well.