MTPS: Some Salary Cap Perspective, or Why $16 Million Ain’t What It Used To Be
The salary cap is rising, but that doesn’t mean your team is signing three superstars. Math still exists, sorry.
There’s been a lot of talk (and no small amount of hand wringing) over the amount of money that teams threw around for players this past summer. That talk has not grown any quieter with news that Kirill Kaprizov rejected an 8-year contract offer that would have paid him $16 million per year.
I already took a specific look at Kaprizov here. Now, let’s focus on the salary cap and the contracts themselves.
The Salary Cap Itself
Before we look forward, let’s look back a bit. Prior to last summer, the COVID pandemic did a number on the NHL salary cap. Take a look:
- 2019–20: $81.5 million
- 2020–21: $81.5 million
- 2021–22: $81.5 million
- 2022–23: $82.5 million
- 2023–24: $83.5 million
- 2024–25: $88 million
That’s three flat years and two years where the cap went up less than 1.5 percent each year before the jump up to $88 million last year. In whole, the cap had gone up a total of just under 9 percent between 2019 and 2025. For perspective, here is where the salary cap stood for the six years prior:
- 2013–14: $64.3 million
- 2014–15: $69.0 million
- 2015–16: $71.4 million
- 2016–17: $73.0 million
- 2017–18: $75.0 million
- 2018–19: $79.5 million
That is a jump of 23.7 percent over six years.
As NHL revenues have recovered (and grown) and certain benchmarks in the collective bargaining agreement were reached, the cap is projected to get back to its pre-COVID escalations with expected cap numbers to be:
- 2025-26: $95.5 million
- 2026-27: $104 million
- 2027-28: $113.5 million
That would mean that, since last season’s $88 million cap number, over the next three seasons (including this one) the salary cap will jump by roughly 28 percent. Some fans see those numbers and think, “hey, that’s great, my team can now sign a bunch of star players.”
I’m here to tell you to slow the eff down with that daydream.
