Russell Morgan 
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Why did the LA Kings wait to place Sean Walker and Alex Edler on LTIR?
There were a lot of questions surrounding some of the moves made by the LA Kings on Monday.
- Quinton Byfield, Samuel Fagemo, and Alex Turcotte were recalled to the NHL.
- Sean Durzi, Jacob Moverare, and Christian Wolanin were assigned the Ontario Reign.
- Alex Edler and Sean Walker were placed on LTIR.
A few of these actions made fans of the #playthekids movement happy. Some questioned why Sean Durzi was sent back to the AHL with how well he played. And many were wondering if the additions of Edler and Walker to LTIR (long-term injured reserve) now meant a move was imminent. While these moves may have some roster impact after the league postponement, they were done for one reason, the LTIR pool.
Julien BriseBois and the Tampa Bay Lightning have made the LTIR quite popular the last few seasons. Famously, Nikita Kucherov was placed on LTIR at the beginning of the shortened 2021 season, only to come back fully healthy in time for their second Stanley Cup run.
From all aspects, it seems easy. Place an injured player on LTIR, and you are relieved of their entire cap hit. That can be true, but there are still moves to be done to make that happen.
PuckPedia.com
I reached out to the folks at PuckPedia.com for some answers and asked why the LA Kings would wait until now to place Walker and Edler on long-term injured reserve.
“The LTIR pool (how much a team can exceed the cap) is the injured player’s cap hit minus how much cap space they have at that time. If they put them on LTIR when they had lots of cap space, the pool would have been much smaller (reduced by more since they had more cap space then). Plus, LTIR allows a team to exceed the cap, so if a team is under the cap, there’s no point in putting anyone on LTIR.”
The #LAKings got within $4K of $81.5M Projected Cap Hit & then placed Edler/Walker on LTIR. This means that they can exceed the cap by their combined $6.15M Cap Hit less the $4K of space.https://t.co/6l1vDVjptr https://t.co/KlW3yZGyhx pic.twitter.com/lYlphitYPK
— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) December 21, 2021
So, at this time, the reason for these moves isn’t to bring in the craved Jakob Chyrchun from Arizona. But it does allow the LA Kings an opportunity to do so if needed further along in the season.
It’s a savvy move from Kings’ management to maximize the team’s cap space to over $6,000,000.