Ik I prob have the concept wrong but let me know😁

no. the salary cap stays the same. kesler goes in LTIR and don't change the cap

And if Kesler shows up at the beginning of training camp and announces he's ready to play?

Cap stays the same and money spent on team stays the same, but it gives you a bit of creativity with when you have to sign a certain player.. like Clarkson with Leafs last year allowed Leafs to hold longer on Marner re-signing and enabled them to go into season potentially without Mitch. LTIR is mostly a good will for organizations with less money to take some burdain off of them.

https://www.capfriendly.com/ltir-faq

Simple version, you active players (non-LTIR) can still only cost 81.5M. Kesler counts towards the cap, taking up 6.875M of the cap, but as long as the Leafs are right at the cap when they put him on LTIR they get relief equal to his cap hit. However, while using LTIR the team doesn't bank cap space (for deadline cap space calculations, performance bonuses, etc.).

The reason Clarkson helped was because Marner needed a new contract and lessons learned with Nylander. On Day 1...it's smart for a GM to be at the salary cap. Then on Day 2...those guys can be sent to LTIR and a guy like Marner can be signed. So if the negotiations went into the season...it wouldn't matter. In fact it actually helped them. It would be a somewhat dangerous game for TOR to trade for Kesler or Hank without having a true purpose up front.

Are Mikheyev or Dermott going to put TOR over the cap? If Yes...then maybe it could work. and they get signed on Day 2 of the season. I guess maybe a UFA could verbally commit, but not sign until after the season starts.

It's not as simple as that. The cap doesn't change, and Toronto would be allowed some relief, but they're not just allowed to go over the cap by Kesler's contract value.

Toronto is allowed to replace the injured player on LTIR with another contract and receive cap relief. The cap relief is calculated each day. So let's say on day 1 of the season, Toronto was $2M over the cap with Kesler's contract on the books. So they divide that $2M by 186 days (or however many days there are in that particular season). In this example, the Leafs would receive $10,752 in cap relief for that day that they could bank and use later in the season.

As the season progresses, the amount of daily LTIR relief earned increases, adding usable cap space to the team's allowance. Halfway through the season, the team would have received $1M of cap relief. For this reason, it's preferable for teams to be as close to the cap as possible before they place a player on LTIR. That's why the team traded for David Clarkson's contract last summer when it was apparent that they might have to deal with a Marner holdout. They expected to be able to fit his new AAV under the cap using LTIR, but they weren't going to be able to afford a pro-rated cap hit for players that hold out into the season (like the situation was with Nylander). By adding Horton, they maximized the amount of LTIR relief they received, even without Marner's hefty contracts on the books.

A lot of people think that LTIR is just free cap space. It's not. It's much more complex than that and can cause issues if you don't fully understand how it works.

You are quite far off, LTIR doesnt adjust the cap. It is essentially money subtractwd from your current cap hit. However you have to look into more detail the the LTIRd contract. For example, if Marner were to go on LTIR the leafs would only get 700k in actual contract relief and 15M in bonua relief. Yes they are 2 different things.
Lets say a player with a 5M contract goes on LTIR and you are 1M below the cap, yoy dont get 6M cap space to work with now, you get about 4M. LTIR cap space is calculated by this: total cap (with LTIR players included) - league cap.
Also technically you count as being over the cap when using LTIR so you cant acrue cap space as the season progresses

Get your PHD out folks. This is my understanding of LTIR cap. But this is the most basic explanation. Not many people in hockey media or fans fully understand it.

putting any player on LTIR does not get rid of the player’s cap hit, the cap hit remains through the sesaon.LTIR may allow the team to go over the upper cap limit by a certain amount. 10% during the offseason. The amount a team can go over the upper cap limit depends on the team’s cap hit at the time the player is placed on LTIR and how close they are the upper salary cap limit. Example is the leafs were 11000$ under the cap on day 1 of last season including the Clarkson and Horton deals which allowed them do maximize the upper limit of cap relief. Teams needs to be cap compliant on day 1 of the regular season and the best case for a team like the Leafs is to be as close to the cap as possible on day 1 of the regular season and then place the player on LTIR. The team will be allowed to go over the cap by the amount of the cap hit of the player placed on LTIR minus the amount of cap space they had prior to the LTIR assignment.

You would have the right cap space if you put Kesler on normal IR on this team, which would be -$5,289,366.

Players on LTIR essentially don’t count against the cap, except for the fact that you can’t accrue cap space with players on LTIR. So for example, if your cap hit without Kesler were $80 million, Kesler would contribute an extra $1.5 million against the cap, so that your cap hit is equivalent to the salary cap at $81.5 million. The biggest problem about using LTIR, which was an issue the Leafs needed to think about last year, is if you have a bunch of injured players and need to go over the cap for a short time. This wouldn’t have an effect on most teams, but since the Leafs aren’t able to accrue cap space, they aren’t able to go back under the cap unless they trade away Kesler (or more than $5.375 million). So the Leafs of last season (or this season, whatever you want to call it) were 2 or 3 injuries away from being forced into a cap overage.

The simple way is it you increase the cap by Kesler's amount you also have Kesler count against the cap. If you keep the cap the same Kesler goes on LTIR and doesn't count against the cap.

This season Toronto had Horton and Clarkson on LTIR. They were never allowed to spend 92.05 mil on other players...

He’s right handed. Maybe they could try him at defense?

Well, he'd certainly be the sandpaper guy to replace Clifford, albeit at a high price . . .

The last part is actually very important. The Leafs being at the cap and using LTIR is one of the reasons they couldn't make a deal at the deadline. In theory, it also could hurt them worse next year if a guy like Nick Robertson makes the team and has a great season that earns him performance bonuses that would be deferred to the 21-22 season and make it even harder for them to make moves that summer.

I don't think you do understand LTIR. Having Kesler doesn't hurt/or benefit the Leafs or Ducks as long as be stays on LTIR. Actually it might hurt the Ducks slightly so they have to carryover the performance bonuses.
Having Horton and Clarkson on LTIR didn't hurt/help the Leafs cap situation last year. Clarkson was obtained for possible cap reasons last seasons and it would have been benefitted the Leafs slightly if Marner had not been signed by the beginning of the season and his contract signing had been dragged out into the regular season.
Leafs and NTC Kesler turn down the trade just in case Kesler is at sometime medically fit and then would really count against the cap.

Don’t even have to give LA that 2nd rounder that way

Agree. LTIR is complicated thing and is really not a way of getting around the salary cap as some believe. However in the leafs situation there are occasional times that i laugh at. Such as at the deadline when they had several players on IR and worked out a deal where they essentially bought a 5th rounder when retaining Lehners salary. If there is a way around these things the rich leafs will find it.

Certainly the Leafs didn't want there two top Dman on LTIR. LTIR is used to make similar cap for when players are injured. Why do so many think adding LTIRs players to your lineup gives you a ton more cap space? And for some reason according to CF posters only the Leafs have figured a way to circumvent the cap. Since almost all of the LTIR are covered mostly by insurance, it's not only the Leafs that can afford LTIR players. If accumulating LTIR contracts was such a cap benefit to teams , maybe teams with really bad cap situations (worse than the Leafs) would be snapping up these LTIRs

Don't be so sure that they're not. The Hawks traded for injury prone Shaw/DeHaan just last year. Now they have (4) RFAs to negotiate with. Sure, none of them are blockbuster signings like Marner, but this can give Stan some flexibility in negotiating. I'm not at all suggesting this was his plan from the outset...in fact I'd find that hard to believe he'd project injures a year later, but the Hawks find themselves in an unfortunate mix with injuries and RFAs due money...the situation the Leafs were in (created) last year.

The Leafs knew Horton and Clarkson were on permanent LTIR....so there cap meant nothing so the they Leafs spend to 81.5m and had the meaningless Horton/Clarkson contracts.
There is more difficulty to managing the cap when a lets say a 5m is on LTIR at the becoming of the season and the team isn't sure when he coming back. If he expected to be missing for half a season, a team can 2.5m more...but how to they do that . Sign a 1.25m player for the whole season? Or get a 5m player and then hope halfway through the season get rid of 5m player....now that' tough.

The Leafs actually had more cap flexibiity last season because the expensive Reilly, Muzzin and Marner went on LTIR. But certainly teams don't want their "stars" getting injured just to get a little cap flexibility.

And to your point...the Leafs truly "weaponize" their cap. They jumped in on that Lehner trade and essentially purchased a 5th round pick from Vegas.