Elliotte Friedman dropped an absolute bomb on Sportsnet last night to open his Saturday Headlines segment. And it could actually be bad salary cap news for the Chicago Blackhawks.
The NHL’s salary ceiling is currently set at $88 million. In early October, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman provided an estimate that, based on league revenues, the cap could go up by the 5 percent the current CBA dictates to approximately $92.5 million for the 2024-25 season.
HOWEVER, as Friedman notes in this segment, the players have an option to increase the cap by more than that prescribed amount — and it could climb to the $95-97 million range for next year.
How could the salary cap going up that much be a bad thing for the Blackhawks? Well, when I wrote about the Blackhawks’ roster potential for the 2025-26 season on Saturday, there are three specific players who would be ideal targets in free agency: Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen, Toronto’s Mitch Marner and Winnipeg’s Nikolaj Ehlers. All three could be set for significant contracts. And those numbers might not have fit with their current clubs if the cap was only going up to $92.5M.
This is still in the discussion phase, and the Players Association and NHL are heading into negotiations for the next Collective Bargaining Agreement in the next year and a half. We’ll see if the players look for a big increase in 2025-26 or if they wait another year for a huge spike.