Calling CrazyCanuck - Landry Cap Question

[Schneed10]

We need a batsignal for CrazyCanuck.

It's rare when I'm baffled by a cap issue, but when I am, I throw up a distress call to CrazyCanuck.

CC, in the Predict Landry's Contract thread, I started off by saying Landry would get $17.5 million in guarantees and $39.5 million in total contract value. But then I started thinking about the rookie pool, and figured there was no way he could get $17.5 million in guarantees. The Skins' rookie pool allotment was $3.4 million this year. After signing our 4 lower draft picks, we had about $2.1 million remaining in the rookie pool to sign Landry.

Now, today ESPN is reporting that Landry got a 5 year contract with $17.5 million in guarantees. I can't understand how that fits under the $2.1 million rookie pool. I always thought that all of your guaranteed money got distributed evenly over the length of your contract. So $17.5 million divided by 5 years comes to $3.5 million per season. If that's the case, his cap number this year would be well over the rookie pool.

So, logic tells me that one of my premises or assumptions is wrong. Maybe it's just the signing bonus itself that gets spread over the life of the contract? Maybe some of that $17.5 million is a signing bonus, say something like $10 million, and the other $7.5 million is another type of guaranteed money? Maybe that $7.5 million is guaranteed to be paid to him next season, and it will allocate over the remaining 4 years of the contract?

So my question is, how is guaranteed, non-signing bonus money allocated to the cap?