Welcome Matt: Bettman's salary cap choice is hurting Canucks more than anyone
It’s not targeted at Vancouver but the Canucks are hurt the most.
Commissioner Gary Bettman said Saturday that the league’s salary cap only stands to increase $1 million (all figures US) for next season. That leaves the Canucks as the sole NHL team to currently be over the $83.5 million spending limit.
Now, there is a Hail Mary chance the cap increases if the NHL Players’ Association is willing to budge on escrow thresholds. Bettman wants something so he’s dug in at the moment, but he’s also the most transactional human being walking the planet so if the players move and grant him his wish, there’s still a snowball’s chance of an increase.
The players owed the league $1 billion coming out of the pandemic. All but a small fraction of that debt has been re-paid, and once it’s gone, the cap could rise significantly.
But because it’s not, Gary holds the cards and is willing to go another year with an incremental increase unless the player’s association is willing to horse trade.
Some terrific analysis hit Twitter the other day, demonstrating how nearsighted the commissioner’s position is when compared to other leagues.
While almost every team sits at the ceiling yet again, waiting for breathing room, the NHL now has a five-year run where it's salary cap increased by just 2.4%.
In the same stretch, NFL's hard cap has gone up 19.4%, NBA soft cap up 22.8%. Even MLB's luxury tax wall is up 12.6%! https://t.co/0AE36T9yzB
— Jeff Veillette (@JeffVeillette) June 4, 2023
The fun part is that hockey-related revenue has increased just fine, to the tune of what should be a $94 million cap in 2023-24. But due to the escrow arrangement leaving the players to owe a large chunk to the owners for the pandemic, we still sit here for a little while longer.
The escrow balance is on track to be paid off in a few months. Great news, right? $10 million cap explosion coming! Not quite — there are annual growth limits too so it’s still going to take another three years the ceiling to catch up to the actual HRR split. Basically an eight-year disruption.
As Veillette goes on to say, franchise values have exploded, expansion money has come in, and two national US TV deals have been signed. NHL finances are in pretty good shape, notwithstanding the looming spectre of these defunct regional sports networks.
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In other words, the cap could almost certainly go up for next season if Bettman wanted. It may also take some significant jumps in the coming years.
But that could well be too late for the Canucks. They’ve spent their wad on Ilya Mikheyev, Filip Hronek, and an Andrei Kuzmenko extension.
They have no room to add other without first subtracting. That is proving difficult in this environment, so expect some bargain bin shopping and talk of “improvement from within” later this summer.