The salary cap was first projected to be going up between 4 and 4.2 million dollars based on revenue projections from the start of the season. However, the league had hinted at times that they might outperform those expectations slightly and that appears to be exactly what happened. Now general managers will have a little more room to work with than they anticipated.
As NHL insider Chris Johnston pointed out, this is the first significant increase in the salary cap since the pandemic. As such, teams will finally be able to move on from some of their mistakes and unlucky contracts that developed due to the flat-cap league.
The league also announced a new salary floor of 65 million dollars. This means that some teams will have a lot of work to do just to hit the floor. The San Jose Sharks for example, will need to spend at least 15 million dollars to be cap compliant. Notably, the Sharks finished in 32nd place last season.
How will the Sharks spend that cap space? It is hard to say for certain, but the team likely won't be that much better next season regardless. As for the rest of the league, whichever team can take advantage of this extra cap room the best may very well be the next Stanley Cup champion.
