It has been a somewhat wierd 48 hours.
The Kings, short on forwards due to the injuries to Kyle Clifford and Trevor Lewis, made an odd roster move yesterday: They called up Nick Ebert and Jeff Schultz. Two defensemen.
Strange right? Considering that just last week Darryl Sutter stated how it was a bad idea for teams to go on a road trip with only 12 forwards. (http://lakingsinsider.com/2015/12/10/december-10-practice-quotes-darryl-sutter/)
Nevertheless, Lombardi called up the veteran Schultz and the youngster Ebert.
Then the Kings played the Ottawa Senators last night, opting to dress 11 forwards and 7 defensemen. Jordan Weal was the lone scratch, meaning that Sutter opted to scratch a forward for....a non forward replacement. He subsequently played Forbort only six shifts, a total of 3:53 in TOI. Furthermore, Anze Kopitar played a season high of over 26 minutes, while Drew Doughty again played over 30. Some strange strange roster decisions.
Well, a day later, and things start to flush out in the way you would expect.
While the explanation in sitting Jordan Weal is still pretty much up in the air and up for debate, the odd roster moves have become more clear. The Kings started the day by reporting that Schultz and Ebert had been "Loaned" back to Ontario for practice before trying to catch a flight to meet the team out there.
Jeff Schultz told me after practice he was loaned back to @ontarioreign this morning. Both he and Ebert were practicing today in Ontario
— Lindsay Czarnecki (@ReignInsider) December 15, 2015The Kings then placed defenseman Matt Greene on long-term injured reserve, and officially reassigned both Ebert and Schultz to the AHL.
As expected, #LAKings have assigned Schultz and Ebert back to Ontario and have placed Greene on LTIR.
— Jon Rosen (@lakingsinsider) December 15, 2015Schultz, who had cleared waivers earlier in the regular season did not have to go back through waivers because he did not stay with the club for at least 10 games. Ebert is waiver exempt. Thus, both these players could go through waivers untouched.
The other thing that this did was bring the Kings cap hit up to as close to the ceiling as possible. Schultz is making 850K, and Ebert is making 691.667K to be as precise as possible.
Why would the team do this? It all stems from the verbiage and rules of LTIR.
Long term injured reserve works in a unique way. Instead of simply removing the injured player's salary from the team payroll, they extend the amount you are able to spend over the cap. There is a caveat though, they subtract the amount of space you currently have available form the player you are placing on LTIR to get that amount you can spend over the cap.
This is explained in fantastic detail right here on Hockeyscap.com
It still can feel very jargony until you hit their very well put together example, which is as follows:
The league upper limit is $69M. A team has an averaged club salary of $68M and a player with a cap hit of $5M becomes injured and the team places him on LTIR. The team is now permitted to spend up to a new limit of $72M: Cap hit of LTIR player is $5M Amount of cap space available to team = $69M - $68M = $1M Amount team can exceed the cap = $5M - $1M = $4M New limit = $68M + $4M = $72M
With the Kings doing some quick math, they called up two players who would not risk getting claimed and would put them as close to the cap as humanly possible so they would not have to subtract hardly any money from Matt Greene's LTIR increase.
Pretty smart right? It seemed far too strange on the surface when it happened for there to not be some underlying logic, and today it all kind of came out. Now the Kings can move ahead with potentially calling up another forward, ala Nic Dowd, to replace one of the two injured forwards in Clifford and Lewis.
There was probably no intention whatsoever for the Kings to actually get Schultz and Ebert on a plane, despite information stating otherwise.
...LAK PR rep tells me they're scheduled to travel today; we'll see if they end up making the trip east.
— Jon Rosen (@lakingsinsider) December 15, 2015It was more of a "Yea you're getting called up" wink wink nudge nudge sort of thing if we are being completely honest. It was definitely a bit of fancy maneuvering by the Kings to get the most out of an LTIR situation.
Despite following hockey for all these years, there are still situations that can arise that can be sort of confusing. This was one of them. While the other confusion last night stemmed from a roster decision by coach Sutter, this was all well planned out by the Kings GM. On top of those two bits of odd news, oh yea, the Kings got trucked last night by the Senators in a sloppy performance in Ottawa. Considering the team had points in nine straight games there is a little leeway to be given.
One thing for certain though, keep an eye on how Sutter uses his forward group moving forward. The last several games he has been none too pleased with the bottom-six group, and that has led to some very high ice times for both Carter and Kopitar. Is this wise to do so early on? Were the Kings not supposed to back off minutes on Doughty? Because as it currently stands, Doughty is playing 27:50 a night, which is a minute less than his average of 28:59 last year. In the last seven games dating back to December 1st, Doughty has played an average of over 30 minutes a night. Furthermore, he has played a ridiculous 48.4 percent of the Kings TOTAL ICE TIME AS A TEAM. He is on the ice almost half the game, every night.
The Kings are starting to get into a strange, yet familiar territory with Doughty. Last season there was an extreme dichotomy in ice time between the third pair and the 26-year old No. 8. Despite all intentions to limit that gap this year, it seems that things have returned to how they were a year ago.
As far as the forwards go....
Should be amazing in a few days when the Kings dress 9 forwards and 9 defensemen
— Rich Hammond (@Rich_Hammond) December 15, 2015Follow me on twitter for news and notes about the Kings and the NHL