Bad news this morning for the New Jersey Devils. Devils GM Lou Lamoriello updated the injury status of defenseman Bryce Salvador and he’ll be out indefinitely with a concussion. Fire & Ice’s Tom Gulitti also reports that no decision has been made as to whether or not Salvador will be placed on the long term injured reserve.
Long term injured reserve requires a player to either miss ten games or 24 calendar days. With the kind of care teams are taking to resolve concussion, it’s certainly possible Salvador could be out that long.
While the player’s salary stays on the cap, a team is allowed to go over the cap by the amount the player makes. In this case, the Devils would be allowed $2.9 million of salary freedom. With the Devils being over the salary cap, you could say that this injury is very well timed for the team, financially-speaking. Of course, not having Salvador on the ice is a problem for the Devils but considering he was an apparent candidate to be moved to get the team under the salary cap, either this injury is very well timed for salary reasons or very poorly timed because they may have been shopping him around.
Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what the Devils do now to make adjustments to the lineup and to their books to make everything work before the season begins. The Devils are already a bit shorthanded defensively with Anssi Salmela out for some time after off-season knee surgery. Expect the Devils to tap into their farm system reserves to fill out the defense in the meantime.
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