Welcome back into the world's most trusted weekly salary cap article, if you want to talk numbers then you've come to the right place. If you want to talk circumnavigating the salary cap, you have also landed in the right spot. This week, let's highlight some players that may be on the NHL playoff roster but currently on LTIR or IR. With that said, we haven't seen as much of the salary cap gymnastics this season, but it is something to monitor and will likely be a topic of conversation during the next CBA meeting.  

Gabriel Landeskog nears return

Okay, so this time it's for real. Every two weeks I feel like we get a story that Gabriel Landeskog is either skating the club, or going on different road trips, and the word that we always hear is that he's "close". This time though, there's smoke and fire, as the Avalanche announced that Landeskog will be on a conditioning stint with the club's AHL affiliate. Breaking that statement down a bit further – he is going to play come round one. In what capacity though, remains a mystery but adding him into the lineup is absolutely a positive for this Avalanche club. This to me is Steven Stamkos coming back and playing all of five to seven minutes a game, it was more just having him in the room and on the bench that helped the Bolts, and I can see to where this is a similar situation.

If Landeskog does play, and play well, this is a player that yes has missed time but is also 32 years old on a reasonable contract at $7M AAV. I don't worry about his cap hit hindering what this club could potentially do during the offseason as if they decide to part ways with Brock Nelson, that frees up $3M in available spend and can piece together the rest of that cap hit with the older blue line contracts that they have. That does thin out their defense groupings more than I would like to see, and I can already see a roadmap to where this club goes 11-7 more than most other clubs next season. For this club, going into the offseason I'm sure they would want to be closer to that $14M dollar mark in projected cap space, but I think that number is going to be closer to $7M. This is still the Avalanche at the end of the day, so I don't worry as much, but if we go back to October 30^th, here are the names on the top six (not including Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen): Nikolai Kovalenko, Ivan Ivan, Casey Mittelstadt, and Logan O'Connor. It's incredible that this club is where they are now, but if I'm this front office come July, my worry is that I could easily be in a similar situation, and that's regardless of playoff success. A healthy and productive Landeskog helps elevate those problems.

In fantasy hockey, I've gone out of my way to draft Landeskog probably earlier than I should most years, but I have just always been impressed with his game. I try not to lean heavily on playoff production as an outlier for the following season's success but he's one that I'm keeping a close eye on.


Injuries in Texas and Manitoba

Starting on the Dallas side, and man oh man do they need Miro Heiskanen back into this lineup. There's also a possibility that Tyler Seguin could return to this lineup as well, with the two combined players accounting for around 22% of the total salary cap. Seguin being out may have spurred this club acquire Mikko Rantanen at the deadline, but I wrote then and believe it now, this team is still structured well moving into next season. I can't see either player returning for round one, but I've been surprised before. I'd hope that this front office, as money-savvy as they look to be, does not take a possible early playoff exit as panic, as this club really is set up for financial stability moving forward. They'll have money coming off their books in Tyler Seguin ($9.8M AAV) in two seasons, Jamie Benn ($9.5M AAV) this offseason, right in time to potentially resign or extend Mason Marchment and Thomas Harley, and that's with Mikko Rantanen's number going from $4.63M to $12M.

For the Jets, I don't believe there's any salary cap LTIR tricks going on here as Neal Pionk and Gabe Vilardi are both going to be out week-to-week. Even with this in mind, they have a very good path as it stands right now come playoffs and from a salary standpoint, I think we need a name for the three years by $3.5M (or thereabouts) contracts that they give out, as their salary cap is littered with them. I can't say I've dove too deep into their salary situation for that reason, but I'm almost palms up on how they construct their roster. If it works, it works! It is funny to me though, they have the best goaltender in all of hockey in Connor Hellebuyck so you would imagine that they'd be top five in salary cap allocation in net…they come in at seventh, and part of that has to do with them carrying a third goaltender on their roster in Chris Driedger.

*Salary Cap data from PuckPedia.com  

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