The max bonus is basically the same as Horton's contract. No worries there....

It is the disadavantage of an LTIR, the flexibility of when you pay the Pefaromance Bonus. As shown, the Leafs don't have much if any cap flexibility to add this year since they don't want no PB carryover into next year.
This year the Leafs are carrying 2.8 PB carryover from last year, the Horton 5.3m and about 5m PB for 2019/20. That's 11m they can add onto next year in salaries.....or about Matthews salary.
I'm surprised they were able to sign Johnson so cheap.

You can't use LTIR for PB's... there is a reason that Horton isn't on it in this mock-up. Team basically needs to stay 10.5M under the cap this year for the cap to work next year (if they're keeping Gards). Plus they have a 2.5M overage this year, along with 1.2M for Phil. This is the painful year of the next few when the team needs to basically operate with a cap 15M less than the actual cap, because of how tight next year will be.

Right...Yah..This is going to be tight.

Thanks for trying to explain this recondite subject for us.

Next year Dubas will trade Horton to a team with cap space;
His last year contract has 3.6M in actual dollars (not insured), a team can trade some player not working for them at 1-2M cap and the burden in dollars wont be much, Leafs lower cap hit by around 3M which gives more flexibility, a draft pick to sweet the deal will be required but would be worth it, and they can always send down to AHL whoever player comes the other way to lower the cap a bit more.