In my opinion Lou Lamoriello and a few other keen NHL GM's muddied the water on these issues with their antics to get around salary cap.
Vets are getting longer NHL contracts that would count against the salary cap if they were to retire. So GMs are working out agreements that said player can stay on the IR rather than retire or even rather than play in some instances where they are deemed ineffective.
So we see players who would continue to try and play make side deals with the GM to move to the IR and collect their paycheck while giving their teams cap relief.
It is a win/win for player and team as the player gets their money and the team gets cap relief.
It really makes things cloudy, because the player is not officially retired but does not plan to play for the length of the contract and will retire after the current contract expires.
It is very rare that we see any NHL players with term left on their contracts flat out retire now. They move to the IR, collect their pay and call it a career after the contract is done.
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