The Stars submitted their roster by the NHL’s deadline on Monday afternoon, but it’s unlikely to be the same one that takes the ice Thursday night in New York when the regular season begins.
For the second straight season, Dallas danced around the salary cap in constructing its “Opening Night” roster in an attempt to maximize cap flexibility throughout the regular season. The biggest move was placing Ben Bishop on long-term injured reserve, allowing the Stars to exceed the $81.5 million salary cap by Bishop’s $4.917 million cap hit.
In order to make the rest of the math work, the Stars made some moves that would otherwise not make sense.
The club kept Jake Oettinger on the NHL roster, in addition to goalies Braden Holtby and Anton Khudobin. The Stars kept Oskar Bäck and Ty Dellandrea on the roster while sending Joel Kiviranta and Jacob Peterson to AHL affiliate Texas. Dallas also sent Alexander Petrovic to Texas and placed Jani Hakanpää on injured reserve.
The Stars ended up using all but $5,429 of Bishop’s available $4.917 million. Bishop is recovering from knee surgery last year, and has not been cleared to play. He has participated in practice throughout training camp.
Teams that use offseason LTIR (like the Stars did with Bishop) are left with $0 in cap space once the regular season rosters are submitted. So it behooves teams to use as much of the available LTIR cap hit as possible when constructing the “Opening Night” roster, and to instead create cap space by loaning players off the NHL roster to the AHL.
For example, the Stars would create room if they loan Oettinger to Texas: $925,000 in cap space and $537,500 to use for performance bonuses. Likewise, loaning Dellandrea to Texas would give the Stars an additional $863,333 in cap space and $537,500 for performance bonuses. When Bäck goes down to Texas, the Stars would receive $850,833 in cap space and $82,500 for performance bonuses.
Accounting for performance bonuses is something the Stars would have to do in order to recall players from the AHL. When a team is using LTIR and it recalls a player, the NHL only allows them to do so if the team has enough space for both their cap hit and their potential performance bonuses — no matter how close that player is to hitting them.
So if the Stars wanted to recall someone like Thomas Harley, they would need space for both his $863,33 cap hit and his $212,500 in performance bonuses. That’s part of why players with big performance bonuses (like Oettinger and Dellandrea) were included on the NHL roster.
“The Stars are setting their Opening Day Roster today in order to get the best possible capture in a compliant manner that will bring them the most flexibility for the remainder of the regular season,” a team spokesperson said in a statement. “If any additional moves are needed prior to the opening game in New York, the club will address those at the time and make those moves.”
Had the Stars used in-season LTIR, they would have had to fit Bishop’s $4.917 million cap hit under the $81.5 million salary cap. At that point, they could have placed Bishop on LTIR and had $4.917 million available to use during the season. But putting Bishop on the roster under the $81.5 million cap would have necessitated a mixture of waiving players or trading players off the roster to create room.
There are other factors that came into play, as well.
Hakanpää broke his pinky finger during the preseason opener in St. Louis and did not play any of the last six preseason games. By placing him on injured reserve, the Stars were able to have his $1.5 million cap hit count towards the cap (and use more of Bishop’s money) but he did not take up one of the 23 roster spots.
“I haven’t been cleared yet, but hopefully here in a few days we’ll get that done,” Hakanpää told reporters in Frisco on Monday. “We’ll kind of go day by day now and see how everything goes.”
Jason Robertson and Blake Comeau did not practice on Monday, and coach Rick Bowness labeled both of them as “day to day” with upper-body injuries. Should they be unavailable for Thursday’s opener against the Rangers, Dallas could recall Kiviranta or Peterson to take their places.
The Stars have until Thursday to monitor injuries and make more potential moves before the season opener against the Rangers.
Here’s the full Stars roster.
Forwards (14): Oskar Bäck, Jamie Benn, Blake Comeau, Ty Dellandrea, Radek Faksa, Luke Glendening, Denis Gurianov, Roope Hintz, Tanner Kero, Joe Pavelski, Alexander Radulov, Michael Raffl, Jason Robertson, Tyler Seguin.
Defensemen (6): Joel Hanley, Miro Heiskanen, John Klingberg, Esa Lindell, Andrej Sekera, Ryan Suter.
Goaltenders (3): Braden Holtby, Anton Khudobin, Jake Oettinger.
Injured Reserve (1): Jani Hakanpää.
Long Term Injured Reserve, Injured Non-Roster (1): Ben Bishop.
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