I've been looking around for an answer to this and it hasn't been easy to find, so I guess i'll ask the wider community here. Who pays the performance bonuses of a player who has been traded midseason? The team who signed him? The acquiring team? The team he was playing on when he met the threshold of the bonus?

They are paid as they are achieved, presumably by the team that player is on when the bonus hits.

Bonus overages are just the cap hit incurred by those milestones being hit throughout the season if the team in question runs out of cap space throughout the season to accommodate for those bonuses.

I have this question in regards to the cap hit as my understanding with Connor Brown's contract is the cap hit moves with him (though EDM would still pay the dollar amount of the bonus).

Do you know what happens to the cap hit on trades? Specifically on trades where the milestone has already been hit (so not like the Jagr to Panthers trade).

I figured this would either pertain to Connor Brown or someone would ask. As far as I know:

1. Edmonton paid Connor Brown is godforsaken $3.225M bonus on November 18th 2023 (or the 19th, minor detail). That cash value went directly to CB28's bank account. Good for him.
2. Bonuses achieved do not directly count towards the salary cap: NHL teams may exceed the salary cap by (I believe) 7.5% throughout the season in terms of bonuses. Whatever cap space the club has left at the end of the season covers the bonuses owed and the remainder is applied to the salary cap of that team for the following season.
3. The cap hit is applied as soon as the bonus is achieved: the only way Edmonton avoids the bonus overage in 2024-25 is by freeing up $3.225M in cap space by the end of the regular season (will not happen).
4. I am uncertain as to who would have been ultimately responsible if Edmonton had traded Brown before hitting the 10-games played threshold. I believe in this case it would have been the receiving team (bonuses are just paid out when the thing happens) responsible for the bonuses.

For what it's worth, I think that any trade or assignment to the minors to avoid that 10-game threshold would have been met with a grievance from the NHLPA as it's effectively cap circumvention by way of withholding the bonus owed.

So by your understanding we cant trade away Brown's bonus, it is a part of our cap hit next season regardless.
For me it raises the question of how that works, I am not at all a cap expert but I do try pretty hard to get an understanding and this has been the most difficult thing for me to grasp.

Brown's Cap hit has not hit our current year cap hit, technically that would happen right at the end of this season and go against next seasons cap.
But if he is traded before then, would that not then transfer to the new team given it is now their contract (and the bonus/salary/cap is include in that contract), meaning a team like say Nashville could make a trade with us and take Browns cap (as it hasnt hit our books) and free the cap hit this season (as no overages are needed due to the cap space Nashville has this year).

To further that, what happens if someone ends the season on LTIR "freeing up" cap for us, does his cap hit then technically hit this season?
It's a weird one, likely one of the few times in history someone with a bonus of this size gets traded as a "cap dump".

Correct, this is the $775k value that he is owed and the number shown on the Oilers team page and when Brown appears in the AGM section.




The remainder of his $775k cap hit would transfer, which pro-rates to $339,063 (84 days left in the season should he be traded today). Edmonton paid the bonus in November, that money is spent and will only count towards Edmonton's salary cap.



Teams don't go into LTIR unless they're directly up against the cap ceiling.

Teams accrue salary cap space the same way contracts cost less in cap dollars the later into the season you progress: if the NHL deadline takes place with 42 days left in a 195-day season, a $1M salary would pro-rate to $215,385. The inverse works the same for cap space: if a team has exactly $1M in salary cap space from the day the season starts to the deadline, they have the equivalent of $4,642,857 in cap space at the deadline. If a team is in LTIR, they cannot accrue this cap space: their salary expenditure (how much they're spending on the roster) exceeds the cap ceiling even though the player on LTIR does not directly count towards the cap while on LTIR. No matter how many players you stick on LTIR, the same thing happens: Brown's bonus is just pushed to next season.

The only way Edmonton gets out of Brown's bonus for next season is if they free up $3.225M in cap space come the deadline, and I think it has to be a real $3.225M, not pro-rated.

Think BC

BC pretty much covered everything but to simplify:
Performance bonus carryover is only reduced by the amount remaining under the cap limit for the current season.
The unused portion of LTIR cannot be applied to overages as LTIR is technically an overage itself, it just doesn't carry over to the next season.