The NHL and NHLPA announced on Friday that significant increases are coming to the league’s salary cap over the next three seasons. The increases come after the league had mostly had a flat cap over the past five years and will dramatically change the pay structure for players and teams around the league.
The numbers are significant and will see the cap rise to $95.5 million in 2025-26, $104 million in 2026-27 and $113.5 million for the 2027-28 season.
Along with the increasing cap, there is also going to be an increasing salary floor that will go from $70.6 million in 2025-26, $76.9 million in 2026-27 and $83.9 million in 2027-28.
That means a lot more money is about to be spent.
So let’s take a look at some of the biggest winners from that increase.
Second-tier free agents
In other words, the NHL’s middle class.
The top-tier free agents and top-tier players who are up for new contracts over the next few years are going to get bigger paydays. That much is obvious. But there are only so many top players that get into free agency, and a lot of the league’s best players are already signed to long-term deals.
The biggest winners here are going to be the second-tier players.
Not only because there is more money to be spent on players league-wide, but also because teams are going to have to spend that money on somebody to reach the salary floors. There are more second- and third-tier free agents each offseason than top-tier free agents, and those players are going to be cashing in with contracts that level of player has probably never seen in the NHL.
Teams that already have core players signed long-term
There is one team that really stands out as a big winner in this category and that would be the New Jersey Devils.
Not only do the Devils already have their best players, like Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt all signed for the next four to five years (and beyond), but they are all signed to contracts that are going to be steals under the cap and well below market value.
The advantage here is obvious: If you have your best players all signed to below-market-value contracts, and the cap continues to rise, that is more salary cap space and flexibility to spend on loading up around them and building an even better team.
Teams like Florida, Carolina and Dallas all fit this category.
General managers
An increasing cap is going to be great news for the people who are given the task of actually building the rosters.
For so many years under the cap system teams have been severely limited in their ability to make trades and roster moves because of tight salary cap situations. So much so that the focus seemed to always shift from whether or not somebody could play, but whether or not they presented the best value. Teams would be forced to give away bigger money players out of desperation to get under the cap. It might building rosters even more difficult.
For at least the next few years there should be a lot more flexibility for team-building and might put the priority back on building the best roster and not just trying to find the best value or making trades based on money and salary cap space.
