Marginally younger, doesn't mean much.

And the holders have said that the cap will gradually raise unless there's some unforeseen circumstances but if that was to happen I think NHL is bound to give some cap relief for the teams involved.

The thing is though that quality will cost, and Gaurdeau will become probably the best pending UFA (should he leave CGY) since Panarin.

He should be firing his agent in immediate fashion if he gets any less than $10M.

The NHL is projecting that the players will have cleared their pandemic debt to owners by the end of the 2023-24 season.Should that happen, the salary cap would be in position to jump again in 2024-25.

— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) December 10, 2021

Here's more on the raise if things go as planned.

4x6 actually. No one said that about hall, and remind me, did he get 100 points before hitting UFA?

Gaudreau is staying in Calgary sorry

Hall won an MVP, then was subsequently injured and traded. If you think he will score a 100 pts for your team, then sign him for $10 million+. I am really not going to argue against that. I just think salary growth will be a little lower than expected…and he ends up under $9 million.

Ah, I was confused when you said Hughes but then thought it was a typo. It makes sense that you thought Hughes didn’t take 8M, if you forgot it, or never saw. We all make mistakes, so I won’t judge you! I agree, Hughes could’ve gotten more.. bad on his part, but it may be good on Tom Fitzgerald’s part.

Have a great one! Hopefully we can talk more in the future!

Again, i just want you to try to think of the last time i guy popped 100 points in his UFA season. What happened with Hall really shouldn’t be considered a comp. Hall had his MVP year (still not 100 points), and had two years after that left on his deal. He had an injury plagued season. Then he was traded to arizona. Then this thing happened….covid. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Weird weird situation. He got 1x8, and then some term.

But it doesn’t really address the overall point. He went into UFA with negative momentum. Gaudreau will go into UFA as the highest scorer to hit the market in how long? Has it been 20 years?

Update: i just looked at this century. If he hits the market, it will be as the highest scorer to hit the market this century. There are not comps for this.

But cap growth is scheduled to decline.
League-wide cap went up over 3% for this year.
Only supposed to go up 1% next two years.

Also, if LTIR is reformed (even if it is not, just the threat of LTIR getting curbed), it will put higher risk premium on big dollar moves with NMC.

Gaudreau should ask for the moon. But league economy isn’t going to be ripe for $10m deals.

All good points. Gaudreau will undoubtedly be the big fish. And deserves every dollar he can get.

But there are many pressures on the system that will depress spending in off-season.

1. While overall salary-cap went up 3% last year, it’s only supposed to go up 1% the next two years.

2. LTIR reform - even the threat of LTIR - is going to make risk-adverse GM’s hesitant in big deals.

3. The flow of ELCs is becoming a little less reliable since the under-scouted, COVID year draftees are now coming to age.

4. Inflation is a very real problem for owners as they cannot raise ticket prices without economic impact or alter TV deals.

5. Owners took the brunt of COVID, they will want to slow salary growth until they are 50/50 again.

I think all those things are going to have a massive affect on the mid-tier guys. The 4x4 guys might become 3x3 now. There might be a lot more players just taking their QO. But the top end guys? This stuff never seems to affect them. This league has been like that during the entirety of the cap era.

I'm bound to disagree - after all last offseason showed us that the contract values didn't have much altering compared to the past.

We'll see where he'll end up, but I'm betting on him getting 8 figures, simply because he'd easily be the best UFA in the free agency in a long while. That is assuming he leaves CGY.

Last year, league-wide salary cap went up 3%, so teams had a bit more runway to work with. Also we were around 2.5% inflation then and are looking at 9-10% this summer.

Wouldn't that inflation suggest that the contracts are bound to get even bigger

We could be seeing the effects already, as many of the 25+ guys like Hertl, Zib, Couturier, Barkov etc have gotten $1-2m less than expectations. Some of the dmen prices have probably offset that a bit. And I agree the correction may come in term.

As for Gaudreau, maybe

6 x $9m
7 x $8.5m

Hertl got more than was expected. Frankly, he’s overpaid. Barkov was right there. I think most thought between 10-11. Couturier maybe didn’t maximize AAV, but with that term, I think most thought it was an overpay if anything. I thought Zibanejad took a haircut.

More importantly, none of those guys hit the market. The guy with the highest point total to hit the market (if he does) this century is going to get top of market.

No, I don’t see how it would. The biggest impact on contracts will be % of bonus vs salary and likely some back-loading of contracts.

Inflation will impact consumer spending as prices rise faster than incomes. So fans will spend more on things like food, gas and less on things like hockey tickets.

Owners are already in the hole for COVID. They will only agree to jumps in cap if profits are there.

I disagree on Hertl getting less than expected. 8x8 was pretty much what was projected for him.

Couturier and Barkov signed pretty team friendly deals considering their values, that's true.

Regardless since these guys have re-signed with their former teams they're not that viable comparisons for UFA market deals.

Well the revenue for this year is expected to be over $5bn, which is a new NHL record. So profit seems fairly likely.

Gains are all new TV revenue. Gate revenue is still down.

he'll get it. I agree tho