With the Flat Cap Era of the NHL nearly behind us, many people are starting to question what the future looks like.
With the addition of two new American TV deals, ESPN and TNT, the NHL saw an influx of Hockey Related Revenue. The ESPN deal pays the NHL roughly $400m annually and TNT about $225m annually. Along with the addition of the Seattle Kraken during that timespan, who paid a crisp $650m USD for the team.
While the NHL and NHLPA have a deal in place to pay the NHL Owners back for lost revenue during the COVID-19 shutdowns, that debt is nearly finished. Set to be paid during the upcoming season. With that debt paid off, the maximum the NHL salary cap is allowed to go up is 5% per year.
On a recent episode of Agent Provocateur(see below), Allan Walsh alluded that the salary cap could go up $4-5m each of the next two years. A much-needed jump in cap space for a league that seems to be running out of cap space.
With significant jumps in the cap, I will be interested to see if the highest-paid contracts continue to increase or if the bottom crop of players will start to benefit more. Currently, there are quite a few NHL-caliber players who simply can’t get jobs due to no teams having space for them.
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