Per Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the NHL has been informing and preparing teams for a sharp salary cap increase over the next three seasons. If it holds true, it’s a landmark point financially in the league’s post-COVID operations and continued growth.
According to Friedman’s reporting, the salary cap will still increase its projected $1MM incremental climb in 2023-24, setting next year’s cap at $83.5MM. However, while original projections labelled a big salary cap jump coming in the 2025 offseason, later reporting, now fortified by Friedman’s report, signifies that a notable jump will likely come a year earlier. The 2024-25 salary cap will be reportedly set around the $87.5-$88MM mark, while the 2025-26 salary cap would be set around $92MM.
The roughly $4MM salary cap Upper Limit increase per season is much more in line with the league’s pre-COVID growth, if not more. The cap rose anywhere between $2MM and $4MM per season between 2015-16 and 2019-20, but now with two additional teams bringing in revenue, it makes sense that the figures would climb a bit more dramatically.
The sharper nature of the increase also looks a lot of recently signed long-term extensions look a lot smarter. Take Nathan MacKinnon’s eight-year extension, for example. While his $12.6MM cap hit will be worth roughly 15% of the team’s total cap space in 2023-24, that percentage will drop to around 13.7% in a $92MM-cap world for 2025-26. The percentage will only continue to decrease from that point onward.
Now, extend that $4MM-per-season growth over the life of MacKinnon’s contract. The salary cap would be $112MM in 2030-31, the final year of his deal, where the contract would be worth just 11.25% of the team’s total cap. That’s equivalent to a roughly $9.25MM cap hit in 2022-23.
Suffice it to say, it’s great news for both teams and players if the reported projections indeed hold true.
Well, that would certainly help and solidify the Rangers core for years to come.
Clearly the NHL is rigging it for the Golden Knights.
That’s huge for the Hurricanes as they have a ton of young talent that needs to be signed over the next couple of years
… if less great for the fans, because it’s not as if the teams are going to cut into their own profits to pay for more salaries. The ice in every arena is going to be covered with distracting advertising, uniforms will look like European ones, and ticket prices will go up and up and up.
There’s a reason I haven’t paid to see a NHL regular season game since the 1990s.