Romanov's torn ACL gives the Islanders less cap help than it looks

The number: $6,250,000. That's Alexander Romanov's cap hit this season and for six more after it. As of Wednesday it's also the most useful figure on the Islanders' cap sheet, because it's about to become relief.

The Islanders said Wednesday that Romanov tore his ACL and will miss six to eight months. He went down in the third period of Tuesday's 5-2 loss to the Rangers after a collision with Mika Zibanejad and didn't return. Even the short end of that window runs into April, so the honest planning assumption is a regular season without him.

Here's my read: the hockey hole is on the penalty kill, and the cap relief is considerably smaller than the headline cap hit suggests.

Where he played

Romanov was one of four Islanders defensemen killing penalties. Through three games he logged 9.7 shorthanded minutes, by our count from NHL data. Ryan Pulock had 13.2, Adam Pelech 11.9 and Logan Stanley 8.3.

The defenseman carrying the heaviest overall workload doesn't contribute shorthanded. Matthew Schaefer is averaging 24.5 minutes a night, tops on the blue line, with 0.8 shorthanded minutes in total. Tony DeAngelo has none. So the responsibility falls to three defensemen who were already doing it, or to somebody acquired specifically for it.

It's a small sample of three games, but a coaching staff's penalty-killing preferences usually show up early and tend to stay put.

The cap math

Here's the part that gets oversold. LTIR doesn't hand a team $6.25 million. It lets the team go over the ceiling by the injured player's cap hit, minus whatever space it had when he went on the list.

Cap sheet: New York Islanders (as of Oct. 7)

• Cap hit: $101,251,250 against a $104 million ceiling
• Space today: $2,748,750
• LTIR: nothing on it yet
• Contracts: 43 of 50; roster: 23 of 23
• Romanov: $6.25M AAV through 2032-33, year two of eight, no-trade clause starting in 2027-28

Put Romanov on LTIR with that $2.75 million still unused, and the room above the ceiling works out to about $3.5 million. That buys a legitimate depth defenseman, not a replacement for a top-four penalty killer.

There's a second, less obvious cost. A team spending LTIR room doesn't bank cap space as the season goes. So if Mathieu Darche uses it now, he gives up deadline flexibility in March. That trade-off is the whole decision.

The contract, plainly

Romanov signed the eight-year, $50 million deal on June 30, 2025. He played 15 games last season because of a shoulder injury. Add this season's three and the first two years of the contract have produced 18 games.

That isn't a verdict on the deal: he's 26, and the term was purchased for 2028 and beyond as much as for this season. But the Islanders are paying full price for a defenseman they won't see until next fall, and the ceiling doesn't care why.

What I'd watch

The penalty kill sits at 83.3% through three games, per NHL data. If it slips below 80 over the next two weeks, Darche spends the LTIR room on a defenseman who kills penalties. My call: he does it before Nov. 1, and he doesn't spend it on a forward.