Let’s begin with a public service announcement: this article contains math. Don’t worry, though; it should be easy enough. No reason to be scared.
Earlier this week, all NHL teams had to submit their Opening Night rosters to the league office. Essentially, clubs had to prove that they were compliant with the agreed-upon salary cap for 2026-27.
In the case of Los Angeles and GM Ken Holland, they started out the season with 22 active players — one shy of the 23-player maximum (more on that in just a moment) — and Kevin Fiala on injured reserve.
Several have asked: why wasn’t Fiala placed on long-term injured reserve? The other common question has been, when will he return? We’ll answer them in reverse order.
General Timeline on Fiala Situation
When it was announced by the team just before training camp that Fiala had a second procedure late in the summer, it took some by surprise. When Kings management was last talking publicly about Fiala he was skating at the team’s training facility in April, and there was even optimism surrounding a possible return if the Kings advanced deep enough in the playoffs.
Would he have been cleared for postseason action at some point? Nobody will ever really know for sure. However, after LA was eliminated by Colorado, the general assumption was Fiala would be ready for camp.
So, what happened?
Injury recoveries are often unpredictable; that’s the best answer.
“He skated in May, felt good, and then when he came back here in August and started skating with the guys and the pace, he just felt something wasn’t a hundred percent, so he saw a couple of doctors and had this surgery,” Holland said on Sept. 17, during a press conference to announce Drew Doughty as captain.
“We’re confident that everything’s going to be good, but I think until you go forward you never really know,” continued LA’s General Manager. “But the timeline is, from surgery, two weeks can’t do anything. Then, get the stitches out. They don’t want him to sweat and risk having something bad happen.”
Timeline wise, Fiala is expected to start ramping things up slowly; to be expected.
“He’ll go on the ice [with a trainer] for a period of time, a few days to a week,” Holland speculated. “Then we’re hoping he escalates up to skating with [assistant coach Derik Johnson], and we’re hoping in three to four weeks, he’s going to be on the ice with the team. But we’ll see how his body reacts.”
It’s important to note that some of this will happen away from the team. Not necessarily in private, but not during regular practice. Which makes that latter point really the first step to any potential return — when will he join the team for practice?
Recently, there’s been a little chatter around Fiala being available for practice sometime in mid-October.
Just taking a quick peek at the schedule LA is home the week of Oct. 11-17. Then, leave for an Eastern Conference road trip, spread over five games between Oct. 20-27.
There’s no rule stating a player has to re-join practice at home. It just tends to be far more common.
There are a lot of ifs built into this. If everything goes according to plan, Fiala is tentatively targeted to rejoin the Kings around Nov. 1.
“Well, first off, there’s a bit of an unknown,” admitted Holland. “If everything goes good, if everything goes spot on and there’s no issues, we’re hoping he’s in the lineup before the first of November. But let’s hope everything goes well.”
Understanding LTIR
Fiala’s contract carries a $7.88M AAV. Why not put him on LTIR to start the season? Wouldn’t that free up money for Holland to go out and sign or trade for a replacement until Fiala is ready?
It’s a bit more complex than a simple yes or no.
As PuckPedia put it in a recent article, “LTIR is one of the most cited, impactful, and yet misunderstood acronyms in the NHL’s salary cap era.”
For starters, a player eligible for LTIR must miss at least 10 NHL games AND 24 days of the NHL regular season.
Again, looking at the Kings schedule, that shouldn’t be a problem. Their 10th game is scheduled for Mon. Oct. 26 vs. the Rangers. And that’s more than 24 days into the season.
Actual math when looking at LTIR to help a team’s cap situation is more complex. From the same article:
— LTIR for players who are returning at some point: The maximum amount that a team can exceed the cap by for an injured player is limited to the league average salary from the previous year ($3,973,228 for 26-27, up from $3,817,293 for 2025-26); this is the “LTIR Benefit Limit.”
— If a team is under the cap prior to placing the player on LTIR, then the LTIR pool is the injured player’s cap hit (to the LTIR Benefit Limit of $3,973,228) minus the team cap space available at the time. For example, if a player with a $4 million cap hit goes on LTIR, and their team has $100,000 of cap space, the team’s LTIR pool would be $3.873 million ($3,973,228-$100,000).
What’s the takeaway for Holland and LA? Well, (A) placing Fiala on LTIR wouldn’t give them the full benefit of his $7.88M contract. It would be capped at the $3.973M limit. (B) When you also factor in that LA is sitting with about $1.8M in free cap space at the moment, that gets reduced from the equation first; thereby melting down the max benefit of $3.973M to about $2.1M. Meaning, the Kings wouldn’t get to add their $1.8M in space to the $3.973M in LTIR ‘savings’ for a number closer to $5.77M.
Next, we get to the actual consequences of LTIR:
While using LTIR allows a team to exceed the cap, there are some negative consequences of being an LTIR team:
LTIR teams do not accrue cap space during the year. If a team has $1 million of space available in their LTIR pool on Day 10 of the season, assuming no other roster moves, they will still have only $1 million of space available at the trade deadline. For non-LTIR teams, $1 million of projected cap space on Day 10 of the season would allow them to add a player with a $4.5 million cap hit at the trade deadline.
By definition, a team using LTIR all season would finish the year with a final cap hit greater than the salary cap. Consequently, any performance bonuses earned by players on that team during the season are carried over and added to that team’s cap hit for the following season. A total of 8 teams have performance bonus overages from 2025-2026 on their 2026-2027 cap.
The performance bonus thing could be an issue for the Kings, as Mats Zuccarello’s contract comes with a $5M bonus after 10 games played. That money gets added to a team’s cap at the end of the year. As noted above, LA currently only has about $1.8M in free cap space. Thus, if they make no other moves all year, Zuccarello’s bonus money will put them over the cap in June — and that overage will need to come off the top of next year’s cap money for the Kings.
Perhaps more important in the foreseeable future is that when a team is using LTIR money, they aren’t banking cap space for later in the season.
This is a key point. Perhaps even the most important. Per Puck Pedia, the Kings are currently projected to have $8.31M in free cap space at the Trade Deadline. With each day they stay under the salary cap limit, their savings builds. It’s another major factor in only carrying 22 players. Teams don’t have to carry 23; so when you don’t, cap savings can be banked.
Finally, does any of this suggest Fiala won’t be put on LTIR at some point? No. If the Kings needed to, they could retroactively place him on LTIR. However, the goal would be to not do it for a multitude of reasons.
More on the Kings overall cap situation can be found in the article linked below.
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