I remember when Yzerman would send Sustr down after last pre-season game then bring him up when the season officially started. I can't remember if he was waiver-exempt at that time. But, I'm, confused on the LTIR rules. I know you can go 10% over before the season starts. That would make it easy to sign Point. I'm not sure if you have to be under the cap at the start of the season or if you can be 10% over then immediately use Callahan's LTIR at the start. If you have to be under at the start of the season, even for 1 day, I guess the only choices would be to have Point miss training camp and sign him the 1st day of the season. Or, trade Callahan's last year along with an asset. If insurance is paying most of his salary this year, it would be an easy way for a team to gain an asset(maybe 3rd round pick).
The 10% gives us the flexibility we need to get all the contracts done and things moved around, and have everybody in camp. So don't worry about the camp part. The LTIR is going to come into play when the calendar flips from last day of camp to first day of reg season, and the 10% cushion goes away.
**Sorry for dragging this off the topic of Verhaeghe; there's probably a better place to discuss this**
My understanding is there are two ways you can deal with the LTIR, one when your total cap hit (including LTIR guy's cap hit) is under the regular cap on first day of season, and one where it's over (but by no more than LTIR guy's cap hit) on first day of season.
In either case, LTIR will cause us to set up two separate, important cap numbers on last day of training camp/first day of reg season. One of these is an adjusted regular cap limit (which will end up equal to or lower than the normal cap limit of $81.5m for the season) and the other is our LTIR relief cap space* that we can dip into. These numbers, once set at the start of the season, will not change regardless of player movement (unless we take Cally off LTIR, which isn't gonna happen).
Here's how those adjusted regular cap limit and the LTIR relief numbers get set under the two different scenarios. If you go into the season:
a)
under or exactly at the normal cap limit (where your cap hit is calculated including the injured contract), then your adjusted regular cap number equals the amount of cap you're using including the injured contract, and your LTIR relief space equals the injured guy's contract value.
b)
over the the normal cap limit (where your cap hit is calculated including the injured contract), then your adjusted regular cap number equals the amount of cap you're using
excluding the injured guy's contract, and your LTIR relief space equals the injured guy's contract value.
So b) gives us the flexibility to be over by up to Callahan's cap hit. But if we use that appoach, it leaves us nowhere to go during the season, because it means that no matter what our total cap hit value on day 1 is, we are automatically maxed out. For example, let's say we can't quite get to the point where we're under with Cally's hit, so we're just barely into option b) territory. For this example, let's use $76m in contracts without Cally, $81.8m with him, and regular cap is $81.5m. Our adjusted "normal" cap number gets dropped down to that $76m, and our LTIR relief is $5.8m, which is $81.8m of total space -- so we are completely maxed out. Of course, going into the season with those numbers would be foolish-- we could've added $5.5m to our rostered cap hit and ended up in exactly the same place. E.g., if instead we had $81.5m in contracts without Cally and $87.3m with him, we'd have an adjusted normal cap of $81.5m plus $5.8m in relief. Once again, we're maxed out, but presumably we have a better team because we're spending an extra $5.5m on salaries. So no matter what, if you use option b), you leave yourself nowhere to go during the season. The only way you can add salary in-season is by moving out equal salary first. There may be a way to game that, like if you sign a free agent who you know you'll be willing and able to trade away later. You would want to sign that guy to a contract that soaks up exactly as much room as you have available, so you're maxed on day 1 and then open up as much room as you can when you trade him. Might be some sort of rule against that, I don't know, and would probably be cleaner just to try to deal away Cally's contract.
*LTIR relief space is mostly like regular space, except not as good because you don't "bank" it during the season. "Banking" of regular cap space would be if you're under the cap by say, $1m at the start of the season, and you stay at that same level for, say, 60% of the season. At that point, you've banked 60% of that $1m, and you can spend it along with your prospective cap room on someone for just the fraction of the season remaining. So at that point, even though you had only been under by $1m from day one, you could go out and sign a guy whose annualized cap hit is $2.5m, because he's going to only earn $1m (= $2.5m * 40%) over the remainder of the season. LTIR doesn't bank, it's use-it-or-lose-it. So if you had $1m in unused space you'd only have the prospective $400k left once you're 60% into the season, meaning you can only sign a guy with a $1m annualized salary.
That's my understanding from reading CapFriendly and a couple articles, at least. Open to any/all corrections on stuff I got wrong.