Spongebob said:
Yes and no. This discussion has been on the business board for the last few days. In a way it is the actual money paid that season except for the situation of averaged contracts.
Look at Hossa's contract for example. He will be paid $5 million in "actual" salary this season. So you would then think that his cap hit is about $61k/game. But the contracts cap number is an average over the length of the contract. So even though Hossa will only be paid $5 million this year his cap hit will be $6 million or about $73k/game.
Hope this is not too confusing.
And to make it even more confusing, it is (as far as we can tell) not just the total salary already paid out that counts against the cap as described, but also projected future salary commitments to players on the roster. A team can go with projected annual payroll of $38M ($1M cap headroom) and pick up a $4M salary player at the trading deadline - 20 games left so only 1/4 of the salary ($1M) will count against the cap. A team cannot have a projected annual payroll of over $39M and then try to shed players late in the year to get actual dollars spend below the cap.
My best guess how this is calculated out -
1. Every player has an annual cap salary. For players on 1 yr deals, it is just their salary. For players on multi year deals it is the yearly average salary (total $$$'s divided by total years). For ELS players it is average salary plus all possible bonuses (earned or not). For Vet/IR players on 1 yr deals it is salary - bonuses will count against dollars paid as they are earned.
2. From that you can get either a per-game or per-day cap salary per player - either divide by 82 games or 180-something days.
3. At any point during the season the total of salary dollars already paid to any players (currently on the roster or not) plus any future salary commitments (based on per-game or per-day salaries and the number of games/days left in the season) for players currently on the roster (or IR) must be less than the $39M cap.
4. Players with long term injuries (min 10 games and 24 days) still count against the cap, but while they are out, replacement player(s) salaries up to the IR players salary, are exempt from the cap.
5. During the offseason, the cap is based on the total annual salary of all players on one-way contracts plus qualifying offers and buyout payments. For players on two-way contracts, the cap hit is prorated based on the percentage of last season they were on an NHL roster. During this time, a team may exceed the next season's cap by 10%, but by Oct 1, they must be at or below the cap.