Sportsnet: Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes when asked about the use of LTIR.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Reporter: “Just wondering in terms of looking at the roster right now, you’re getting nearly close to being under the salary cap at the start of next year. Is that necessarily going to be the goal to help you kind of have that flexibility to either accrue cap space or utilize LTIR?
If so, what’s the mindset going into training camp in terms of getting that done?
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Hughes: “Well, we often have discussions, which we did the year before and opted against it, which is to avoid going into offseason LTI because when you do that, even if we used $2 million of a million and a half dollars let’s say, if we put Carey Price on offseason LTI, his money’s gone.
Then we lose the flexibility during the year, which we did last year right, with the all the injuries and recalls and bonus money, we get into overages. Which carry the cap costs into the following year.
So with each passing year we’re going to be more and more mindful wherever we can to try not to do that and to preserve Carey. The unfortunate part is, when we bring Carey in to, we don’t put LTI until in-season, pretty hard to use $10.5 million of his money in-season.
So, LTI isn’t perfect situation for any team. I know some people think it’s simple and you just use the money that, that players salary was occupied. But it’s a little bit more complicated.
Having said that, if we find opportunities again to, like we did the last time around with Sean Monahan where we think it’s worth while, we’ll do it and put ourselves in offseason LTI but we think as of right now, we’re safe to go in-season with Carey.”
Reporter: “Just to follow up on that Kent, so just to be clear, you’re saying the plan right now as it stands, you could enter the season with Carey on the roster and use in-season LTIR. I understood that correctly?”
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Hughes: “Yes, for Carey. Yeah.”
Reporter: “Would you not need to shed a bit more money to do that?”
Hughes: “No, I think there’s a couple other situations that I can’t speak to at the moment, but I think we’re in a position right now to be able to do that.”
