That salary thing again

So, as this guy does a terrible job of explaining, there's another thing we have to consider when we look at the return of our injured: cap space. Let's do a quick recap on how injured reserve works.

If a player is placed on regular injured reserve (IR), it is just like he has been suspended. His body doesn't count against the 23-man roster size cap, but his salary still counts fully against the cap. From a cap perspective, it's no different than if he's just inactive, like Erik Christensen currently is and forever should be. Once put on IR, a player must be out for 7 days (regardless of the number of games played in that time).

For longer-term injuries, a player can be placed on long-term injured reserve (LTIR). On LTIR, a player must miss at least 24 days and at least 10 of his club's games. The only other difference between IR and LTIR is that on LTIR, there is a cap consideration. But it's not as simple as the player just not counting against the cap (is it ever simple?). Because Wolski, Rupp, and Staal are all on LTIR, let's take a look at how it works.

A player on LTIR counts fully against his team's salary cap, just as any other inactive player. (He does not, of course, count against the roster maximum.) To make up for the player's loss, his team can put any number of "replacement players" on the roster. These replacement players do not count against the salary cap at all. But their annual salaries (note: not their cap hits) must not surpass the annual salary of the replaced player on LTIR.

For example, your team has signed me for a long contract whose annual cap hit is $3 million. In this particular year of the contract, I am being paid $5 million. I contract scabies or some shit, and I go on LTIR. You can call up my buddy Jim, who is one a 1-year, $5 million deal, to replace me. Or, you can call up two dudes who each make $2 million this season, even if they're at the end of long contracts with $6.5 million cap hits. See?

So, where does that leave the Rangers? Let's take a look at all the various things that count against the Rangers' salary cap today.

Forwards we play these days (to win games) (Gaborik, Richards, Callahan, Dubinsky, Avery, Anisimov, Boyle, Fedotenko, Stepan, Hagelin, Prust, Mitchell): $32,754,167
Defensemen we play these days (Girardi, McDonagh, Sauer, Del Zotto, Eminger, Woywitka): $8,412,500
Goalies (Lundqvist, Biron): $7,750,000

Regular scratches (Christensen, Stralman): $1,825,000
Long-term injured reserve (Staal, Wolski, Rupp): $9,275,000
Chris Drury's buyout: $3,716,667
Cap overage from last season: $527,000

Then there's one thing listed on CapGeek that I don't understand. Apparently (I have not yet found this section of the CBA), if a player gets injured during training camp, and that player played at all in the previous season, he counts at least in part against this season's cap. Chad Kolarik tore his ACL in training camp, and he played 4 games for us last season. According to CapGeek's FAQ, he should count proportionally to how much he played last season (if you figure he was on the roster for a week and a half, he should count at 1/18 of his cap hit, or $29,167. CapGeek, however, lists his cap hit at the full $525,000. For the purposes of my calculations, I'll go with my figure. And so:

Chad Kolarik's ACL: $29,167

This brings our totals to $48,916,667 for players we're currently playing and $15,372,834. NB: We are winning as much as we are by putting out a nightly roster that costs a million dollars less than the Islanders' total cap hit. By my math, that's a total cap hit of $64,289,501. And this season's cap is $64.3 million. Which means, unless I'm mistaken, we don't have to designate anyone as a replacement player. So, theoretically, if Staal, Wolski, and Rupp all came back, and we could somehow fit everyone into our roster, we'd still be under the cap. How about that?