Earl Sleek has a cheeky Pucktoon up over at AOL. The topic is managers looking to cut players (literally) in order to ditch salary to become cap compliant.
Basically, Earl's reasoning is: encourage some hobbled player to get surgery in the off-season in order to get some relief from his cap hit through the LTIR loop-hole. Something similar was proposed in the comments here by Kyle re: Rhett Warrener's problematic contract. Unfortunately, that's not really an option according Sleeks commenter:
This is a tricky part of the CBA. One thing to note is the team must be compliant with the cap BEFORE the player is injured. So in the case of the teams you mentioned, including your Ducks, the LTIR exemption would not provide any relief.
What the LTIR exemption does is allow the team to go over the cap to REPLACE a player that is injured long-term. If Schneider got injured tomorrow, the Ducks could go over the cap up to his salary amount (assuming the Ducks are exactly at the cap), but it never lowers the salary cap figure.
Assuming that's right (sounds right), unless the Flames can convince the NHL that Warrener was damaged during the prior season (and not this summer), it looks like an AHL demotion is inevitable for Rhettsky this October.
