Cap To Increase By 6 Million

Sports Business Daily  is reporting that the NHL salary cap will increase from 50.3 million to 56.3 million next season. The cap floor will also increase, it will be 40 million, or a little above.

Since the lock-out season in 2004-05, the cap has steadily continued to increase. From three years ago until now the NHL has increased it’s cap, with three years left in the CBA, it isn’t ludacris to suggest that by the end of the current CBA the NHL will have a salary cap of over 70 million at the current rate of inflation.

It’s a good thing that the cap continues to climb, sure the fans are paying more for their tickets, but it also means that even if ticket prices have soared the fans are willing to pay, which in turn means more revenue for the NHL, and teams.

Unfortunately for the NHL when the current CBA ends, if the cap is 70 million or over, teams like the New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Detroit Red Wings, and maybe a few others will be able to maintain a competitive team, however there might be another debate as to small market teams like the Edmonton Oilers, and Calgary Flames–to name only two– and if they will be able to survive with the cap and floor being so high.

This could result in the public and players as well as the owners losing one year of hockey and revenues as well as salaries for nothing, Eventually you might have teams being able to support two three or four players making over 8 million a season. That doesn’t mean that a certain team will be the best. Look at the Tampa Bay Lightning, until the trade deadline Tampa had Vincent Lecavalier, Brad Richards, and Martin St-Louis, and they did poorly even though those players had a good year.

I presume that for now all the fans can do is go with the flow, and challenge their respective teams to use the accending cap to acquire better players or keep the good players that they already have. However if the world of hockey is subject to another lock-out in three years I don’t think that the fans will be so quick to come back to the sport.

For now let’s all enjoy the fact that there is hockey, and make our teams use the money that is available to them and acquire some more players, let’s enjoy it while we can.