Confirming the NHLPA’s vote on Friday, the NHL has announced that the salary cap for 2017-18 will be $75 million, an increase of two million dollars over last season.
This will have an impact on Washington’s offseason plans.
The Caps have six restricted free agents they will try to re-sign: Andre Burakovsky, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Nate Schmidt, Dmitry Orlov, Philipp Grubauer, and Brett Connolly
If possible, once the RFAs are spoken for, the team will explore re-signing last season’s leading goal-scorer, unrestricted free agent TJ Oshie.
With two extra million dollars under the cap, the team has a bit more flexibility to make a deal happen. The expansion draft may simplify things slightly – Grubauer and Schmidt are projected favorites for Vegas – though finances will still be tight for Washington next season. Kuznetsov and Orlov will receive significant promotions; they have a combined $5 million cap hit now.
The Caps were confident of re-signing Oshie had the cap been a bit higher. “If [the NHL salary cap] comes in at $77 [million], we’ll probably have a legitimate shot at signing him,” MacLellan told Katie Brown in May.
Here are the cap hits for the active roster, thanks to capfriendly.com.
The team has previously announced that they do not intend to make any buyouts this summer, though doing so for Brooks Orpik would save $3 million over each of the next two seasons.
From the NHL:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / JUNE 18, 2017
NHL, NHLPA ANNOUNCE TEAM PAYROLL RANGE FOR 2017-18
TORONTO/NEW YORK (June 18, 2017) — The National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players’ Association today announced that the Team Payroll Range established for the 2017-18 League Year, pursuant to the Collective Bargaining Agreement, provides for a Lower Limit of $55.4 million, an Adjusted Midpoint of $65.2 million and an Upper Limit of $75 million.
Headline photo: Chris Gordon
