Shane Wright called up, Kartye sent down — but it’s all a mirage

The Seattle Kraken announced that they had recalled Shane Wright from Coachella Valley and sent Tye Kartye down in his place. This, on the surface, makes very little sense. Kartye has played well and has been productive. Calling up Wright makes more sense, as he’s been excellent at the AHL level in Coachella Valley.

The only players who can be sent down to Coachella from the Kraken without going through waivers are Matty Beniers, Ryker Evans, and Tye Kartye. Otherwise sending anyone down to the AHL means there’s a 24-hour period where any team can claim him and pick up his contract and would only make it to the AHL if no team issued a claim. (This is how Seattle picked up Eeli Tolvanen from Nashville, a truly inexplicable move to put him on waivers in the first place.)

This has everything to do with Jaden Schwartz’s injury. Schwartz was placed on Long-Term Injured Reserve (hereafter LTIR). LTIR allows a team to exceed the salary cap as long as that player is injured. However, it doesn’t just mean you can place a player on LTIR and get his full salary as cap relief.

Rather, the amount of cap relief given for a player on LTIR is a function of two things:

• The player’s contract (as one would expect).
• The amount of available cap space the team has when they placed the player on LTIR.

It’s (the player’s contract – amount of available cap space). So if Schwartz has a salary of $5.5m and the Kraken are at $80.5 million and the cap is $83.5 million, they would get $2.5 million in LTIR relief (Schwartz’s $5.5m contract – $3m remaining space). It’s better to be closer to the cap when you place a player on IR.

Shane Wright’s salary is $918,333 and Kartye’s salary is $859,167, a difference of $59,166. The Kraken in essence created about $60k extra cap room by making this transaction before putting Schwartz on LTIR. On Saturday, they can send Wright back down to the AHL and call up Kartye. The amount of cap relief was locked in the moment they placed Schwartz on LTIR.

$59,166 might not seem like very much cap room and it’s not, but it was essentially free to do so by the Kraken. I fully expect Wright to be “sent back down” to Coachella Valley on Saturday and Kartye “called back up,” maintaining the status quo — but got a little extra value at zero cost.

There is some small chance that Kartye says down in Coachella Valley to make room for the newly-acquired Tomáš Tatar, but I don’t think the Kraken are just straight swapping Wright for Kartye. That’s part of a bigger set of moves to stay under the cap in light of the Schwartz/Schultz/Burakovsky/Grubauer injuries and finding cap room for their replacements.