#nhl-salary-cap

#nhl-salary-cap

During Lou Lamoriello's tenure with the NY Islanders, a portion of the contracts the former GM gave out involved max-term or close to it. The AAV given out was fair, but as the salary cap continues to rise, many of these contracts can be looked at as steals in their later years. The salaries given out this off-season have been substantially inflated. Today, Jake Walman signed a seven-year, $7M AAV contract with the Edmonton Oilers.

The NHL salary cap is set to rise precipitously. Connor McDavid is still 28 years old, and he is Connor McDavid. The Edmonton Oilers, as a team and as a business, rely heavily on their continued employment of Connor McDavid. So it was easy, when extension talks neared an agreement, to imagine some insane numbers. The max eight years for certain, and an AAV that starts with a "20" and ends in "million" seemed likely.

Tkachuk, 27, said earlier this month that he expected to miss "the first two or maybe three months" of the 2025-26 NHL regular season if he decided to undergo a procedure, a decision he was still debating at the time. The Panthers winger revealed after last season that he sustained a torn adductor muscle and a sports hernia injury while playing for Team USA in the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. He missed the final 25 games of the NHL regular season but returned for Game 1 of the Panthers' first-round series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.