It was another weekend in which the biggest stories came off the ice, including our second consecutive Friday night blockbuster. We’ll get to the J.T. Miller trade and the follow-up deal with the Penguins in a bit.
But first, let’s focus on the biggest news of the weekend, a story that will have repercussions in the league for years to come. The salary cap is going up — way, way up. After years of stagnation due to the pandemic, the ceiling will rise from the current $88 million to an estimated $113.5 million over just three years, an average jump of $8.5 million per year. And it’s possible those numbers end up even higher.
Let’s break down what this could mean.
Bonus five: Thoughts on a $113.5 million cap
1. This is great news for any pending free agents — Obvious point is obvious, but we have to lead with it. If you’re Mikko Rantanen or Mitch Marner or Brock Boeser, you’re a happy guy these days, or at least your accountant is. To be clear, this news didn’t come out of nowhere, and teams were probably already factoring a major jump into their offers. But having it confirmed should help everyone get on the same page. And while that’s true for the stars, it may be even truer for the middle-of-the-lineup types who were often the ones getting squeezed by the flat-cap era.
2. Some young stars are going to be huge bargains very soon — Some already are, but just wait a few years. Players like Miro Heiskanen ($8.45 million until 2029), Lucas Raymond ($8.075 million until 2032), Cole Caufield ($7.85 million until 2031) and Tim Stützle ($8.35 million until 2031) all decided to lock into max-length deals in a flat-cap world. There’s a non-zero chance Jack Hughes (just $8 million until 2030) will be making half of what his brother Quinn makes in a few years.
There’s value in security, and all of these guys will take home more than enough money to be set for life, so nobody’s shedding any tears. You would assume all these players knew what they were getting into and made a choice they’re comfortable with. Let’s just hope they don’t mind being the fifth- or sixth-highest-paid player on their team for years to come.
3. This won’t be good news for some smaller-market teams — Or at least, that’s the early concern, with suggestions that some teams won’t be able to get near the new upper limits. Pierre digs into that question here.
Teams have always had internal budgets, and not all teams spent to the cap every year. But most did, and the gaps were small enough that it still felt like everyone could compete. A rapid rise to the ceiling could mean a return to the days where bigger markets have a significant advantage — not to the extent they did in the pre-cap era but certainly more than we’ve been used to in recent years.
That said …
4. This isn’t completely unprecedented — In terms of percentage, these won’t actually be the biggest jumps of the cap era. The very first cap increase, which came after the 2005-06 season, saw the ceiling rise from $39 million to $44 million, an increase of nearly 13 percent. The rise in 2008 was also just under 13 percent, while in 2011, the jump was over 8 percent. For comparison, the three jumps announced on Friday range from 8.5 to 9.1 percent of the previous year’s cap.
Those pre-2012 seasons were a different world, under a CBA that saw players get 57 percent of revenue as opposed to the 50 percent it’s been since the 2013 agreement. But it’s worth remembering those big jumps didn’t seem all that seismic at the time, and we didn’t see a league in which the big-market teams gobbled up all the talent and won all the championships. If anything, maybe we should view this week’s news as a return to how things are supposed to look in a hard cap system, not as some sort of outlier.
5. This should be way better for fans — This will sound odd to younger or newer fans, but there really was a time when hockey fans spent most of their time arguing about which players were better, or how a star would fit into a lineup somewhere, without immediately mentioning their salary. After 20 years of the cap era, it’s become second nature to view everything through a dollar lens, where good players with bad contracts aren’t good players. As Justin Bourne noted, it would be nice to move away from that.
Contracts will always matter in a hard cap league and will always be part of the picture in evaluating anything an NHL team does. We’re not talking about that factor disappearing. But it sure would be nice if it became something other than the primary concern for every single move. The flat-cap era has been exhausting. Good riddance to it.
Anyway, here’s hoping you had a better weekend than James van Riemsdyk. On to the rankings, and then to those trades …
Road to the Cup
The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.
While it won’t get them near the top five quite yet, we have to recognize the Senators putting an absolute beating on the Wild in the single most impressive team performance of the weekend. That’s four straight wins for Ottawa, as they start to pull away from the crowded Eastern wild-card field. Not bad for a team that’s still missing its star goaltender, and yes, I think we all know exactly where this is headed.
The game was also notable for this ugly moment:
Ryan Hartman earned an in-person hearing for that one, meaning he can expect a lengthy suspension.
5. Carolina Hurricanes (32-17-4, +32 true goals differential*) — They haven’t exactly dominated in the four games of the Rantanen era, but tomorrow provides a good test and potential final preview against the Jets. Let’s see how that goes before nudging them out of their spot.
4. Dallas Stars (34-17-1, +38) — Five straight wins while adding Mikael Granlund is more than enough to get them back into the top five, pushing the slumping Golden Knights out.
(Speaking of the Knights, and only because I know fawning goalie sycophant Jesse Granger would want me to mention it: Congratulations to New York’s Jonathan Quick, who beat Vegas last night to record his 400th career victory.)
3. Washington Capitals (34-11-7, +55) — They’ve suffered back-to-back 5-4 losses in overtime, but get a chance at redemption tomorrow against the Panthers. Also, be sure to check out the new Alex Ovechkin goal tracker.
2. Winnipeg Jets (37-14-3, +64) — Their win over the Capitals gave them a league-leading 77 points, they’ve got the best goals differential, and they’ve won six straight. It sure feels like top spot in next week’s rankings is there for the taking. But for one more week, at least …
1. Edmonton Oilers (32-16-4, +30) — I’m keeping them here, but let’s just say it’s an extremely shaky hold. They nearly pulled off the comeback against the Leafs on Saturday and probably would have if it weren’t for yet another dumb and nitpicky offside review. Still, Cup favorites shouldn’t be falling behind by three goals at home, especially against an opponent that had been slumping. Daniel has more on the loss, which was Edmonton’s fourth in its last seven.
*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.
Not ranked: New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks and Pittsburgh Penguins — It’s not quite a three-way trade, but it feels like it might as well be. First, the details if you missed them over the weekend: The Canucks send J.T. Miller, Erik Brännström and prospect Jackson Dorrington to the Rangers for Filip Chytil, Victor Mancini and a 2025 first-round pick that’s top-13 protected. Vancouver then immediately flips that pick along with Danton Heinen, Vincent Desharnais and prospect Melvin Fernström to the Penguins for Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor.
Let’s start in Vancouver, where the Canucks finally close the book on the long-running Miller vs. Elias Pettersson saga that apparently was not all made up by the media after all. In return, they essentially get Chytil and Marcus Pettersson, two good players with significant question marks. For Chytil, it’s his health, with a long history of concussions hanging over what should be a bright future. For Pettersson, it’s his status as a pending UFA, and the Shiny New Toy potential of the contract the Canucks will now presumably have to give him.
Is essentially trading a 100-point player for two question marks a good move? Well … yeah, I actually think it might be. I’m more bullish on this move from Vancouver’s perspective than others seem to be. While the old cliché about addition by subtraction is usually nonsense, it’s fair to say that getting Miller out of town is probably a good thing for the Canucks, or at least a necessary one. And remember, as good as he’s been in recent years, this is a guy signed to an $8 million deal that runs until he’s 37. Even with the cap jumping up, that has the potential to be an ugly contract fairly soon. The move is certainly a step back for the Canucks in the short term, but the ongoing dressing room drama had mostly torpedoed the short term already, and now they’ve got two players who could be significant contributors to the reload. (And Frankie likes Mancini a lot, too.) Add it all up and I’m with Drance: I like this just fine for Vancouver.
That doesn’t mean I hate it for the Rangers, because that’s a team very much in win-now mode. Given how the season has gone so far, New York is one of the few teams that can justify adding Miller now and hand-waving away the remaining years on his deal as a problem for another time (and let’s face it, if things go poorly, almost certainly another GM). Dom’s model says this move gives the Rangers a significant jump in their playoff odds, and right now that’s close to all that should matter for this team. Four points in two games is a nice start to the Miller era.
As for the Penguins, they get a first for a pending UFA, which is a nice bit of business. They also all but wave the white flag on their playoff hopes, which is tough to swallow but probably a necessary dose of reality for a team that needs to rebuild whether they want to use the word or not. And maybe the signal to the rest of the league induces a few more calls to Kyle Dubas about what else could be for sale.
All told, I think all three teams come out ahead, given where on the timeline each should be focused. The team that needs to get better right now did it. The team that needs to rebuild for the future got a high pick. And the team that needed to clean up the mess of its own making and then turn the page for the short-term future took the first step in doing so. Nice work by all involved. I’m calling it a three-way win.
The bottom five
The five teams headed toward dead last and the best lottery odds for a top pick that could be James Hagens, Matthew Schaefer or someone else.
If you missed it, Corey had his midseason rankings for the 2025 draft, and one player seems to be separating from the pack on his list.
5. Philadelphia Flyers (23-25-6, -29) — They’ve lost three straight and five of six, all in regulation, and made the sort of trade that probably means it’s time to bottom out. Welcome back to the bottom five, for the first time since November.
4. Buffalo Sabres (21-26-5, -14) — They’ve won three straight, including over decent teams like Boston and New Jersey. They’ve got Columbus tomorrow, and then only one of their next seven against a team currently in a playoff spot, so there’s potential for a second-half push toward ruining their draft pick .500.
3. Nashville Predators (18-26-7, -31) — Saturday’s shutout in Pittsburgh was their fourth straight regulation loss, and they get the Senators buzzsaw next. But after that come two very big games: at the Blackhawks and then at home to the Sabres. Yes, we’re at that point of the season where it’s all about losing to the other bad teams, preferably in regulation. If the Predators are going to take serious a run at the top lottery odds, this would be a good week to make some progress. Or not make it. You know what we mean.
2. Chicago Blackhawks (16-31-5, -44) — Not a bad start. They should use this play every period, in my opinion.
Don’t ask how the rest of the game went, I’m sure it was fine.
In other Hawks news, captain Nick Foligno had some interesting thoughts about Connor Bedard, diving and the evolution of emotion in the NHL.
1. San Jose Sharks (15-33-6, -57) — The Canucks moves stole most of the spotlight away from Saturday’s Granlund trade, but I like it for the Sharks. They’re one of the few obvious sellers with rentals available, and cashing in two of them for a first-round pick is solid work by Mike Grier. The Sharks are still at that tricky stage of the rebuild where soon it’s going to be time to start making progress up the standings. For now, banking picks and prospects still makes sense, and they’ve sent a clear signal to the rest of the league that they’re open for business.
Not ranked: St. Louis Blues — The Brandon Saad buyout certainly wasn’t the biggest transaction of the week, let alone the season. But it was one of the year’s strangest, as a player voluntarily walked away from over $5 million to ensure he could go to a contender rather than the AHL.
Jeremy breaks it all down here, including why Saad chose the path he did. He ended up signing with the Golden Knights, adding some top-nine scoring punch to a team that’s already a lock for a playoff spot. Meanwhile, the Blues get out from the rest of the contract with no cap penalty.
The question is what we can learn from the original plan to send Saad down to the AHL. Was that an admission that it’s time to rebuild, by clearing space for younger players at the expense of a veteran? Or was it more about changing the mix for a team that still thinks it can contend for the playoffs? Heading into the week, four straight regulation losses had dropped the Blues seven points back of the final wild-card spot, so the reality of the situation isn’t hard to see. But recognizing reality isn’t exactly a strong suit of struggling NHL teams, so … last night’s win over Utah means they’re completely fixed, right?
I guess we’ll see. The next week or so probably tells us the tale, because four of their next five come against the Oilers, Panthers, Jets and Avalanche. Make some hay against that group of contenders, and maybe there’s still some life left in this St. Louis season after all. But if the more likely scenario plays out, we can probably write the 2024-25 Blues off once and for all.
(Photo of J.T. Miller: Danny Wild / Imagn Images)
