I'm trying to wrap my head around LTIR and teams going "over the cap" and I just wanted to sort this one out. If a player is injured for a period of time and they are exempt from the cap during their injury so if they're out 25% of the season and make $4m against the cap the team can now use $1m of that cap hit against another player. There are players who, like Marian Gaborik are effectively retired but still earning their salaries because they are technically out with injury. Those players will not be on a roster during a whole season so Gaborik's salary of $4.8m can be used in LTIR to offset his salary.

What someone was telling me was that Gaborik or players like him don't count against the cap AND their cap hit is used as LTIR. What am I missing here? This seems counter intuitive. Why doesn't every team in the league sign an injured player to a 14 million dollar deal keep him on LTIR and have a magical $14m extra to spend?

I'm on my phone, so I don't want to type out an essay, but the CapFriendly LTIR FAQ is very helpful.

The short answer is that acquiring LTIR contracts does not give teams magical cap space.

so what you're saying is.... I'm not crazy?

I reread your original post again and to answer another part, LTIR players still count against the cap. Teams get to exceed the salary cap by the amount of the contract (or similar depending on the ACSL).

To review, that exceeding amount isn't magical cap space. If Tampa is at a cap hit of $88m with Kucherov et al, adding Gaborik is not adding a magical $6m (which is the long explanation for why Tampa acquired him and Nilsson). So, you're not crazy