Transaction Analysis: Flyers File, Adjust Opening Roster

The National Hockey League's deadline for teams to file their season-opening rosters for opening night passed at 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday. Not every team's official opening roster will be identical come their first game to the one submitted to the League office.

Many teams had to perform salary cap gymnastics in order to a) file a cap-compliant opening roster, and b) maximize available LTIR (long-term injured reserve) allowance to exceed the cap ceiling to replace injured players who face lengthy or even full-season absences with healthy replacements.
First, let's look at the roster the Flyers submitted to the NHL. Then we'll discuss the adjustments that were made afterwards as well as briefly explaining the different categories of Injured Reserve that are teams' disposal in various circumstances.
Below is the roster that the Flyers submitted to (and was approved as cap-compliant) by the National Hockey League.
FORWARDS (11): Cam Atkinson, Noah Cates, Nic Deslauriers, Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost, Kevin Hayes, Hayden Hodgson, Travis Konecny, Scott Laughton, Owen Tippet, James van Riemsdyk.
DEFENSEMEN (7): Ronnie Attard, Justin Braun, Tony DeAngelo, Ivan Provorov, Rasmus Ristolainen, Travis Sanheim, Nick Seeler.
GOALIES (2): Samuel Ersson, Carter Hart.
In addition to these players being on the official season-opening roster for cap compliance and LTIR-maximizing purposes, the Flyers made the following roster moves on Monday:
* Waiver-exempt players Wade Allison, Tanner Laczynski and Egor Zamula were "loaned" the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
* Ryan Ellis and Sean Couturier were placed on injured reserve (IR).
* Patrick Brown was designated an injured non-roster player. Additionally, Felix Sandström and Bobby Brink were eligible to be designated within a sub-category of injured non-roster players called season-opening injured reserve (SOIR).
On Tuesday, the Flyers adjusted the roster. As expected, Ellis was moved from IR to LTIR and the trio of Allison, Laczynski and Zamula were recalled. The Flyers are now at actual 23-man active roster with 13 forwards, eight defensemen and two goalies.
The bottom-line explanation for the series of on-paper moves, without delving into the specifics of the cap management dollars and cents being juggled: Monday's moves were designed to get the Flyers down as close as possible to the cap ceiling for roster-filing purposes. Placing Ellis on IR on Monday and then transferring him to LTIR on Tuesday opened up most of the potential allowance to exceed the salary cap by up to the maximum $6.25 million average annual value (AAV) that Ellis' contract carries.
Now let's briefly explain the various other categories of designations that the Flyers and other teams utilized in order to submit active rosters that were both compliant with the salary-cap and the 23-man active roster limit.
Injured Non-Roster: A player who suffers and injury during the offseason and either fails a physical upon reporting or is otherwise unable to pass a pre-camp physical can be designated as injured non-roster. Patrick Brown injured his back during the offseason and underwent surgery.
Under NHL rules, Brown wasn't eligible for IR but could be designated as Injured Non-Roster. For practical purposes, it functions in many ways the same as regular IR. Brown can rehab at the Flyers Training Center (FTC), attend team meetings, etc. The only thing he can't do is practice with the non-injured players on the team.
Around the league, there are quite a few prominent players who are very much in their NHL teams' roster plans once they are medically cleared but have been designated Injured Non-Roster for the time being. For example, Washington Capitals' power forward Tom Wilson had off-season surgery to repair a torn ACL and was designated Injured Non-Roster.
Season-Opening Injured Reserve (SOIR):This is a non-roster designation available if a player is on a two-way contract and played a minimal number (or zero) NHL games the previous season. Under NHL rules, teams may not assign ANY injured players to the AHL nor may a waiver-eligible player be waived for such purposed until medically cleared. There is a different formula used compared to standard IR, which can greatly reduce although not completely eliminate the SOIR player's cap hit until he's medically cleared.
Injured Reserve vs. Long-Term Injured Reserve: Standard IR is available when a player who'd otherwise be on the active roster is slated to miss at least one week. This can be back-dated for a player who was the active roster but continuously unavailable to play due to injury or illness. Once placed on IR, even if the player proves able to return before a week passes (example, a day-to-day injury in which the player is put on IR), he must sit out for at least the one-week minimum.
Long-term injured reserve can be used if the player will miss a minimum of 24 days and 10 games. It is most commonly used in place of standard IR when a team would exceed the salary cap to replace the injured player on the NHL roster.
If there are other avenues by which a team can replace an LTIR-eligible player without exceeding the cap, it is often preferable to use regular IR. This is because, at the end of the season, teams that rely on LTIR run into the risk of incurring salary cap overages once bonuses owed to players are added into the equation. Those overages become penalties that reduce available cap space correspondingly for the next season.
To use a Flyers example, it's preferable cap-wise for the team to avoid having to add Sean Couturier (currently week-to-week with a back injury) to LTIR alongside Ellis. This designation would only be advantageous in the short term if additional injuries/injury replacements would exhaust the LTIR allowance for Ellis and additional space were needed to add players.
Another disadvantage to being in LTIR allowance: teams cannot bank space for later use. Let's say that a club is $2 million under the full-season cap ceiling on opening night (the cap is actually computed daily, not for the whole season but it simpler to refer to the full-season equivalent). If that $2 million of free space is still there at the exact midpoint of the season, the team could then apply the $2 million of banked cap space to obtain a player whose AAV was $4 million. Conversely, a team that has $2 million of LTIR that has not been used as of the same date has only the LTIR space and no banked-space credit.