With the salary cap on the rise in the National Hockey League, teams are already taking advantage.
After several seasons of a flat cap coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, this season’s cap is at $95.5 million. Next year, the cap jumps to $104 million before taking another leap to $113.5 million in 2027-28.
Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold expects most teams to spend right to the cap but others will be more careful moving forward with the amount of space available to them.
“Probably about 90 per cent of the teams [historically] plan to go to the cap, but it’s going to change,” Leipold told The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun this week at the Board of Governors meeting. “The cap’s going up, and it will cause us and other teams to look at, ‘Is this the right number for us?’ And if not, we’ve got to make the right decision.”
The Wild took advantage of the cap rise right away, inking superstar Kirill Kaprizov to a record-breaking eight-year, $136 million contract extension with an AAV of $17 million at the end of September.
Other teams have since stepped up and inked cornerstone players to expensive deals.
Oct. 2 saw a trio of defencemen inked to long-term contracts. The Anaheim Ducks signed 24-year-old Jackson LaCombe to an eight-year, $72 million extension, while the Florida Panthers also locked up Niko Mikkola for eight years at $5 million per. The day was capped off by the New Jersey Devils signing RFA Luke Hughes to a seven-year, $63 million contract.
Dallas Stars defenceman Thomas Harley, who was set to be a restricted free agent this summer in the final year of his two-year, $8 million bridge contract, inked an eight-year, $84.7 million contract to remain in the Lone Star state on Oct. 28.
Montreal’s Lane Hutson (eight years, $70.8 million) and Utah’s Logan Cooley (eight years, $80 million) also re-upped before their entry-level deals were set to expire this summer.
Kaprizov wasn’t the only pending unrestricted free agent to cash in well ahead of July 1.
Four players – Winnipeg’s Kyle Connor ($96 million), Vegas’ Jack Eichel ($108 million), Colorado’s Martin Necas ($92 million) and Los Angeles’ Adrian Kempe ($85 million) – all signed for the maximum eight years, while others like Edmonton Oilers defenceman Jake Walman (seven years, $49 million) and Mike Matheson of the Montreal Canadiens (five years, $30 million) decided to remain with their current clubs instead of exploring the market.
But despite the current flow of players signing big deals, the dramatic rise of the cap over the next few years has made it hard to forecast which teams will actually commit to spending to the limit.
“You know, that’s to be determined, I think,” Canadiens owner Geoff Molson told LeBrun. “Most of the teams pretty much end up there [right now]. We went through the pandemic and the flat cap for three years, and now it’s sort of catching up, right? I’m as curious as you are in figuring out where it’s going to end up in two or three years when the cap is quite a lot higher.
“I know that we’ll do all that we can to have the best possible team as the Montreal Canadiens. I can’t speak for the other teams.”
For some of the NHL’s smaller markets, the revenue sharing program will continue to be critical to remain competitive as the league’s richer teams have the ability to spend to the limit.
“I think maybe what’s not fully understood is the impact or the magnitude that revenue sharing has on all of this,” Winnipeg Jets chairman Mark Chipman told LeBrun. “That was a focus of ours. And a number of other teams as well that are beneficiaries of that model that was put in place over 20 years ago.”
The most recent collective bargaining agreement addressed revenue sharing with some tweaks.
“It did, and in a material way,” Chipman said. “So it’s just not a concern [whether or not as many teams will spend to the cap]. The system is built, and you’re seeing the outcomes of it — I don’t think we’ve had this kind of competitive balance, at least not in the 15 years I’ve been in the league.
“And I think a good part of that can be attributed to: If you’re responsible and thoughtful about how you run your team, you should be competitive. You should be able to get yourself to the cap when you need to. I don’t see that changing at all. I think that’s inherent in the understanding of our agreement now with our partners, which is our players.”
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly shared two big tweaks to the revenue sharing system this week at the Board of Governors meeting.
“There’s two things: One is that the pool will be bigger, and two, it’ll be distributed a bit differently,” Daly told LeBrun. “It’ll hit the middle class a little bit more than it’s been hitting the middle class.”
A team like the Colorado Avalanche, who are firmly in their Stanley Cup contention window, has a number of players on its roster on long-term contracts, with two-time Norris Trophy winning defenceman Cale Makar eligible for an extension starting on July 1.
Avalanche president Joe Sakic admits he doesn’t know how the cap rise will affect all teams but likes the flexibility of having more cap room.
“It’s great — the league is doing strongly. If the cap keeps going up, then revenues are there, right?” Sakic told LeBrun. “But because it was pretty flat for so long, I think it’s going to allow teams to have a little breathing room when setting their lineups and have their cap. I don’t know all the teams that will go to the top, top of the cap — no one knows that yet — but you will have flexibility where you don’t have to be right there when you’re stressed about injuries and shouldn’t have an issue with only dressing 18 guys, for example.
“Teams should have that flexibility when the cap goes up there. But the cap going up is great for the league and great for the players.”
