It may be "bad precedent"....that every single team in the league engages in. Should Ekblad be forced out of G1 because he missed regular season games to end the season? What about Jarnkrok, same thing?
You can argue that players should be forced to play or not to play. But unless you can point to a specific rule that was broken, there was nothing done wrong.
I'm actually really glad you bring up Ekblad because that situation highlights everything that's wrong with what's happening with the LTIR situation and why a rule about players on LTIR being ineligible for round 1 would work.
Ekblad got injured the day after the trade deadline. So because of that bad luck, the Panthers couldn't replace him with say Hanifin. Compare that to Vegas which was able to bring in Hanifin, Hertl, and Mantha because Stone was hurt before. Both teams losing a top player, but only one gets to replace him with some real talent, all because of the timing around injury.
Now say there's a rule about players on LTIR not being allowed to play in round 1. In actuality, like
@TLEH is saying, no players would actually miss any time because teams won't be stupid and add salary to block a player from coming back. Ekblad would have just been taken off LTIR because, guess what, Panthers didn't add another $7M salary when he went down. As for Vegas? They just wouldn't have added Hanifin, Hertl, Mantha, and Stone would be activated. No player who would be playing would be blocked from playing
As for the Avs/Landeskog example, simply just make a rule that a player that starts the season on LTIR would be exempt. Or heck just leave it, he's missed all season already, what's another round. Then in round 2 just let it be a free for all.
The only reason why people keep saying players would be blocked is because of the assumption that if a team loses a player to LTIR, some feel like that team is entitled to make up entirely for the lost cap spend, but I doubt that was the intention of LTIR in the first place. Its called Long-term Injury
Relief, not Replacement.