FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The NHL has the tightest salary cap of any major league, but that cap — tight as it may be — is about to skyrocket.
The league and its players association announced Friday some staggering estimated cap numbers for the next three seasons: $95.5 million in 2025-26, $104.0 million in 2026-27 and $113.5 million in 2027-28.
There had been buzz for months the cap might jump up soon, but nobody expected this. It’s a stark contrast to the last five seasons, in which — partially due to the pandemic — the cap has risen very slowly from $81.5 million in 2019-20 to $88 million this season.
For the Blackhawks, Friday’s news could be good in some ways and poorly timed in others. Here’s a breakdown of two groups — one of which they fall in — that stand to potentially benefit from a skyrocketing salary cap:
Big-market teams
In theory, teams that have the most money to spend should benefit most from the increased opportunity to spend it.
And in theory, the Hawks should fall in that boat. They’re a big-market team with one of the most robust fan bases in the United States. During their 2010s dynasty era, they would’ve given anything to raise the salary cap by $25 million, which would’ve prevented the erosion of their depth that occurred every summer.
As chairman Danny Wirtz told the Sun-Times last June, “This is a league where you have to be prepared to spend to the limit to be able to win the Stanley Cup.” And that has consistently been the Hawks’ ideology throughout the NHL’s salary-cap era.
Right now, there’s little variation league-wide in player payrolls. Only three teams — the Ducks, Flames and Blue Jackets — have a total cap hit below $81 million this season, per PuckPedia. Everybody else is tightly bunched around the cap.
As it skyrockets, however, the gap between the relatively rich and poor franchises could widen, in the same vein as in MLB — although not with quite that much variation. Small-market teams like the Jets, Senators, Sabres and Sharks might not be able to keep up as closely with the Maple Leafs, Canadiens, Rangers and theoretically Hawks of the world.
But even relatively rich teams likely did a double-take at Friday’s news, and the Hawks’ business department gulped even louder than most.
After all, this has been an awful year revenue-wise for the Hawks, with their TV fiasco being the biggest culprit. The idea of increasing expenses by $25 million sounds scary to their finance folks right now. If the team finally starts winning in the next few years, though, that will help increase revenue and ease the pain.
Teams with long-term contracts
Friday’s news makes Seth Jones‘ oversized contract look much less problematic for the Hawks. His $9.5 million cap hit now stands to occupy only 8.3% of the team’s total cap space in 2027-28, for example.
By the same logic, general managers of teams who have already locked up many core players to long-term contracts at predetermined cap hits will love this news. Consider the Lightning, for example, who already have Victor Hedman, Brayden Point, Jake Guentzel, Brandon Hagel, Anthony Cirelli, Nick Paul and Erik Cernak signed through 2029 or beyond. Suddenly, each of those contracts will occupy a smaller percentage of the cap, leaving them enough space to add more depth around them.
The Hawks, however, do not fall in that category. Aside from Jones, most of their future core players are youngsters coming up on entry-level contracts who will need extensions in the next few years, including Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar in 2026. They only have three players — Jones, Alex Vlasic and Tyler Bertuzzi — signed past 2027.
They also plan to be active in free agency the next few years— as they seek a few established stars to augment their youth movement — and those free agents’ demands just increased, too. Mikko Rantanen, the top pending free agent this summer, was reportedly already asking for $14 million per year, and his odds of actually getting that — or even more — just went up.