All these Anaheim Ducks are in a row

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With the Ducks so close to the salary cap that they’ve had to trade Mathieu Schneider and Sean O’Donnell and demote Bobby Ryan, why did they bring up a third goaltender Wednesday, before the NHL’s deadline for submitting rosters for the first games in North America?

If you guessed salary-cap considerations, go to the head of the line and get ready for a math lesson.

The Ducks summoned David LeNeveu from their Iowa farm team so they would be as close to the cap as possible when they submitted their roster -- and they ended up being $26,670 below the cap limit of $56.7 million. That’s important because when a club puts a player on the long-term injury list -- as the Ducks plan to do with Brad Larsen (pictured here) -- it is allowed to go over the cap by the amount of the injured player’s salary minus the amount that the club is beneath the cap total at the time the player is put on the long-term injury list.

As soon as Larsen is put on the list, the Ducks will be eligible to go over the cap by $535,000 (Larsen’s cap hit) minus $26,670.

Also, if a club goes over the cap because of this provision, the recalled player must make less than the injured player, in this case Larsen.

LeNeveu won’t be around for long. He probably will be sent back before the Ducks’ season opener Thursday in San Jose.

Here’s a link to the roster as it stood at the NHL’s submission deadline:

Download 2008-09DucksRoster.doc

-- Helene Elliott