The Tampa Bay Lightning faced a major setback during the 2020-21 season as Nikita Kucherov, one of their key players, had to sit out the entire regular season due to an injury. However, when the playoffs began, Kucherov was fully recovered and played a crucial role in leading the team to their second consecutive Stanley Cup victory.
However, this success was not without controversy. Due to the rules of the National Hockey League (NHL), each team is assigned a maximum amount of money that they can spend on players' salaries. In the case of the Lightning, they were up against this limit and could not afford to activate Kucherov until the playoffs began.
To manage their salary cap during the regular season, the Lightning placed Kucherov on long-term injured reserve (LTIR). However, once the playoffs began, there was no salary cap, and the team was able to activate Kucherov, and other players which put their salary cap $18 million above the limit. This led to criticism from other teams and fans, who believed that the Lightning had an unfair advantage over their opponents.
Fast forward to today, it seems like this scenario has a chance of repeating itself, as one of the Boston Bruins best players are currently on LTIR and is apparently healthy enough to play, but cannot get into the lineup as the Bruins do not have the cap space to activate him off LTIR:
