How future salary cap numbers could impact Penguins

They will suddenly have a lot of flexibility for different types of moves.

The big NHL news on Friday is that the league and player’s association have released the salary cap estimates for the next three seasons, and they represent a potentially significant spike over that time.

The numbers, via Elliotte Friedman:

Those are some significant numbers and are going to be great news for pending free agents, players up for new contracts over the next couple of seasons and of course teams all across the league.

So let’s take a quick look at how that could impact the Penguins.

As of Friday, a $95.5 million salary cap next season would give the Penguins roughly $30 million in cap space with already 14 players under contract.

They would have more than $60 million in salary cap space in 26-27 with seven players under contract, and more than $87 million in cap space for 2027-28 with five players under contract.

That is a lot of flexibility in the coming seasons, and they do not really have many key players or young players that are due for significant raises or big contracts in the near future.

I don’t know that the Penguins are going to be in the market for a big free-agency splash this offseason, but they could have the flexibility to take on a couple of more Kevin Hayes type trades where they essentially buy some draft picks or prospects for eating somebody else’s bad contract.

The free agency aspect of this going to be the wildest and most unpredictable part of the increasing cap. Not only are teams going to have more money to spend to the upper limits of the ceiling, there are also going to be a lot of teams that are going to have to spend more money just to make it to the cap floor. Given how few impact free agents hit the open market, the mid-level free agents and low-level free agents are going to be positioned to get some pretty significant deals. After all, that money is going to have to go to somebody.

There could, however, be a trickle down impact with that. If the mid-level and low-level free agents are getting more money (and they will), it could make some of your current bad contracts a lot more attractive in a trade, and perhaps help you get out from them. Maybe somebody is willing to take, say, a Ryan Graves type contract at $4.5 million if a comparable player is getting $5, $6 or $7 million as a free agent (and for more years into the future).

That is to say nothing of the aforementioned teams that will need to take on salaries just to get to the floor.

After years of a mostly flat cap the numbers are finally rising. It is going to change a lot about the financial landscape in the league, both in what players make on future deals and how current contracts will look.