that's not entirely true
the way ltir works is that when you move a player to ltir you take your current cap space and subtract it from the ltir'd players cap hit. so if you have 3m in cap space and put a player with a 5m aav on ltir you get 2m (5m aav minus 3m in cap space) of "bonus" cap space for as long as that player is on ltir. so if it happened in the upcoming season you'd go from an 88m cap to a 90m cap. you DON'T get to subtract the ltir'd players cap hit from your cap though, you just get to exceed the cap by the bonus amount
if you have 7m in cap space instead of the 3m in the above example and put a 5m player on ltir then you don't get any bonus cap space. you can still only spend 7m in cap
this is why teams try to get as close as possible to the cap upper limit before moving players to ltir and why sometimes players who are out for months or even the season never make it to ltir
it's also why acquiring players permanently on ltir doesn't actually let you cheat the cap. it only helps you reach the cap floor. otherwise you're just replacing perfectly good cap space with potentially less cap space
it's also why having poolman on the books is problematic for the canucks if they plan to accrue cap space by running under the cap. you can't combine LTIR space with regular cap space on a single player. you have to use up as much of your cap space as possible BEFORE using ltir (altho once you have done that you are free to shift players on and off the roster as you wish)
