What happens if a player is injured long-term (LTIR)?
If a player is considered to have a long-term injury (causing them to miss a minimum of 10 games and 24 days), they can be placed on the Long-Term Injury Reserve (LTIR), which can be used to receive cap relief.
While placing a player on the LTIR does not remove the player’s Salary Cap Hit from the overall team cap, it does provide the team relief if the team’s total average Salary Cap exceeds the upper Salary Cap Ceiling. More details are available at the LTIR FAQ.
Once an injured player returns to the team from the LTIR, the team must reduce its average salary cap to below the Salary Cap Ceiling before they may remove the player from the LTIR.