Stars have $0 in their performance bonus ltir pool, won’t all of it will go towards next year’s cap?
Edit: should have scrolled down further.
The thing I thought was the most likely outcome happened ... overage, but I still don't know technically why. That performance bonus pool was reduced to $0 by those players. It was a placeholder. When you're using LTIR, the bonuses are automatically factored in.
Just to simplify it as much as possible these numbers aren't completely realistic. Say you have an ELC worth $1.5 million with all bonuses and just $1 million with salary. If you're not in LTIR, that player counts $1 million on the cap. If you're in LTIR, that player takes up $1.5 million in LTIR space. Let's say you acquire a guy with a $1.5 million salary though ... just a standard contract no bonuses. You're in LTIR, and that player also counts $1.5 million ... the exact same as the ELC. If you have more than $1.5 million in LTIR space ... you're fine. No issue adding the standard contract, and you have no overage for next season.
Using that same logic, if your LTIR is greater than all of your ELCS and their bonuses ... in what world does it make sense that you'd be forced to carry over a bonus that you were already forced to accommodate this season? I knew that was probably the rule and application, but I still can't wrap my mind around it making any sense.
It feels like you're being punished for playing a guy on an ELC in LTIR. The best way to illustrate my confusion might be this. Oettinger cost $1,462,500 in LTIR space all season he was up because of his bonus. There were times Dallas couldn't call up a particular forward they wanted because Oettinger's full LTIR cap hit prevented them from calling someone up. You already paid $537,500 for his bonuses this year in LTIR space. They were the reason at one point Gardner gets called up because his salary cap fit where another (I believe it was Damiani) didn't.
In REAL money, you're paying Oettinger $1,462,500 which he earned, but in actual cap hit you're paying Oettinger $2,000,000. That includes the $1,462,500 you were forced to carry as LTIR any time he was on the cap this season because of LTIR plus an additional $537,500 bonus this coming season despite covering that bonus with LTIR in 2021-22.
Technically in real money, Oettinger didn't earn his full salary because he played some games in the AHL, but that doesn't actually impact the discussion here.
It seems pretty clear to me that Dallas or any other of the many teams in the same situation are being double charged. If you're going to force them to carry it over to next season, there is ZERO logic to make them accommodate that bonus in LTIR during the season. There's no world where they should have done this, but if they had just paid a goalie $1,462,500 in straight salary (the equivalent of the money Oettinger earned), they wouldn't have had an overage for that player making the exact same money.
It's probably a very minor inconvenience, but it's for me at least that doesn't make sense.