The whole LTIR 'cheating' thing mainly depends on if the player is actually healthy enough to play or not (and WHEN they're healthy enough to play) and 99% of the time we just don't know the answer to those questions.
Back surgeries can take a long time to rehab - Who knows, maybe Arvidsson does need a couple months post surgery to rest and rehab before he even starts skating again. Same could've been true for Stone last year.
I feel like it then becomes an asset management situation. Let's just say Stone was healthy enough where he technically could've played around the time game 70 rolled around last year. Isn't it kinda smart to give one of your best players some extra time to rest before the playoffs start if you can afford to do so and still make the playoffs?? Why throw a guy in the lineup with ~ 10 games left and risk additional injury - especially with a guy who's missed all or most of the season??
Another factor here is: You still have to actually make the playoffs with that key player being out. Vegas still had to make the playoffs without Stone and Tampa still had to make the playoffs without Kucherov. The Kings will hypothetically still have to make the playoffs without Arvidsson. That's a lot easier said than done.
For me, I'd only label it as cheating if the guy on LTIR was legitimately healthy for the last 15+ games of the regular season and was intentionally held out of the lineup strictly for cap reasons. Sure, we might think that's what has happened with guys like Kucherov/Stone but we don't know for sure. Ultimately until they make an actual rule about it and/or begin investigating players on LTIR, this is just going to be a part of this cap-strapped league. If teams have guys dealing with serious injuries and can afford to keep them on LTIR and still make the playoffs, then ice the guy in the first round after missing significant time, they're going to do so.
