Gary Bettman, commissioner of the NHL, announced today that the NHL's salary cap for next season will be a bit higher than previously expected.
Early projections had the cap at $87.7 million, but now the league is stating that the cap will be an even $88 million for next season.
That's a $4.5 million increase from the prior year.
After years of a stagnant flat cap due to the effects of COVID-19 on league economics, we're finally starting to see actual, significant boosts to the NHL salary cap again.
So how will this affect the Carolina Hurricanes?
According to CapFriendly.com, the Canes currently have a projected cap hit of $61,125,833 for the 2024-25 seasons for the players currently under contract.
That means the team would have $26,874,167 in space this offseason.
However, that projection includes a handful of player who more than likely will start in the AHL next season.
So if the Canes maximize their available space and put the waiver eligible players through to the AHL — Bradly Nadeau, Jackson Blake, Ryan Suzuki, Scott Morrow and Ronan Seeley — they'd actually have $31,200,000 in available space and potentially $31,975,000 if they pass Spencer Martin through too although he isn't waiver exempt.
So what do they need to spend that money on?
Here's how the roster currently looks with the team down eight UFAs and three RFAs from the main roster:
Andrei Svechnikov - Sebastian Aho - ?
? - Evgeny Kuznetsov - ?
? - Jesperi Kotkaniemi - ?
Brendan Lemieux - Jordan Staal - Jesper Fast
Jaccob Slavin - Brent Burns
Dmitry Orlov - ?
? - ?
Frederik Andersen
Pyotr Kochetkov
Potential Fill-Ins: Bradly Nadeau, Jackson Blake, Ryan Suzuki, Scott Morrow, Ronan Seeley, Spencer Martin
If we take a look just at players who played NHL minutes last season and that are under contract, Carolina has only 12 positions filled.
So they need to potentially pay five forwards, most of those being middle or top-six, and three defensemen.
We can assume that guys like Scott Morrow or Bradly Nadeau will probably have a shot to make the roster, but for this exercise, we'll assume they're getting a year to adjust to professional hockey in the AHL.
So eight players with approximately $31 million or just under $4 million per player. So in other words, Carolina is going to have to find ways to make that money stretch.
And of course Carolina can still look to dump salaries or move more more money out in a trade than they take in. That's always an option too.
But finding creative ways to make it stretch is going to be important, especially because Seth Jarvis is going to command significantly more than $4 million.
The RFA had a career year and will command top dollar from Carolina on a long-term deal.
The front office has done it before so we'll just have to wait and see, but that extra $4.5 million is going to significantly help.
