There was a tweet from JR, retweeting another site, that calling Bolduc up now let's us bury his performance bonuses if he gets them under Faulk's unused LTIR. So this is probably just a early cap move in case we trade away forwards at the TDL and Bolduc needs to play more down the stretch
I can't find the tweet because searching twitter is a disaster if you aren't a member. I'd like to see the context, but that theory makes little sense to me.
Bolduc has essentially no chance of hitting any performance bonuses this year and even if he did it would be right at the end of the year. He can't hit the games played threshold to hit any 'per game' performance bonuses, so the ones he could possibly hit are 20 goals, 35 assists, 60 points, or end of season all rookie team. Hitting any of those benchmarks would make him one of the best players in the league and his maximum bonus is only $400k.
If we think that he is capable of hitting any of those benchmarks in his first 27 NHL games, it is absurd that we left him in the AHL all year due to concerns about having a bonus overage.
Edit: After looking at Capfriendly, I think I figured out the real reason (if it is in fact contract related and not performance-based). Bolduc's contract got us closer to the $83.5M cap than any other contract we could have called up, which maximizes the amount of LTIR relief we got when we put Faulk on LTIR. Bolduc got us within $2,319 of hitting the salary cap exactly, which means we are allowed to exceed the cap by $6,497,681 while Faulk is on LTIR. Not calling anyone up would have made that number $5,634,348 and calling up a cheaper AHL player would have resulted in a number in between. We didn't have the cap to call up a more expensive player before putting Faulk on LTIR (which also reduces the space we 'gain.'
Bolduc's contract is almost perfect to maximize our flexibility from putting Faulk on LTIR. I don't think that is the only reason he's up here, but it was probably a factor. Calling him up on paper would have been possible. but actually getting him a practice and game (or more) in the NHL and a few days of NHL money is a much better way to keep a prospect happy than explaining a paper move to him.