A quirk of the NHL’s salary-cap system gave new Carolina Hurricanes forward Jeremy Welsh a record $17.9 million salary-cap figure when he signed to play in the team’s final game Saturday.

Welsh, an undrafted free agent, signed with the Hurricanes after Union’s semifinal loss in the NCAA’s Frozen Four on Thursday. His one-year contract included a $92,500 signing bonus in addition to an annual salary of $832,500.

Welsh earned one day’s salary – 1/185 of his annual salary, based on the number of days in the NHL season, or $4,500 – as well as his entire signing bonus for playing in that one game. Based on the NHL’s labor agreement, that entire bonus counts against the Hurricanes’ salary cap, so his one-day salary-cap figure was $97,000.

That one-day figure is multiplied by 185 to get his full-season cap figure of $17,945,000, although only one day of that is applied to the Hurricanes’ cap, leaving them at $50.5 million for the season, 27th in the NHL, according to the cap-tracking website capgeek.com, which first noticed the anomaly regarding Welsh’s cap figure.

Welsh, who played 15 minutes in Saturday’s 4-1 loss to the Florida Panthers, completed the first year of his contract by playing in that game and is now a restricted free agent.

DeCock: (919) 829-8947; twitter.com/LukeDeCock