There are plenty of things that excite Vegas Golden Knights fans. Some include the month of October, flamingos, the salty tears of other fans, and whatever Kelly McCrimmon has cooked up. The general manager has carefully constructed the current roster with a wide array of players to win another Stanley Cup. So far? The team has 68 points with the 4 Nations Face-Off coming later this month.
But nothing excites fans more than the salary cap going up. How much, you ask? Well, here's a little table to show how much the league plans on increasing.
Season | Upper Limit | Lower Limit |
|---|---|---|
2025-26 | $95.5 million | $70.6 million |
2026-27 | $104 million | $76.9 million |
2027-28 | $113.5 million | $83.9 million |
The news came on Friday after the league came to an agreement with the NHLPA on Friday. If there wasn't another reason for 31 other fanbases to despise the Golden Knights, well, here you go. McCrimmon has unlimited power on who he can sign.
Of course, there are other meanings to the Golden Knights having more spending power. They also have some cap space to work with over the next three years. How much, do you ask? Well, let's map out the projected totals for the next three seasons, shall we? Let's thank PuckPedia for this one.
Season | Cap space |
|---|---|
2025-26 | $16.74 million |
2026-27 | $38.88 million |
2027-28 | $75.58 million |
These totals leave plenty of wiggle room for McCrimmon to work his magic. Fans can feel comfortable knowing that Jack Eichel will get a solid payday for his next contract. Maybe $12 million AAV? Who knows? But there are other benefits to a rising salary cap for the Golden Knights. Let's dive into the other benefits of the increased salary cap in the NHL, specifically in Las Vegas.
How the increased salary cap helps the Vegas Golden Knights
Kelly McCrimmon made it a priority to get his pending free agents for next season locked up. That meant signing Shea Theodore to a seven-year, $7.425 million AAV deal. Brayden McNabb ($3.65 million AAV) and Keegan Kolesar ($2.5 million AAV) have also been locked in for three years, with the team's core locked in for that period.
Looking at those deals from the salary cap increase, those contracts will barely make a dent in the cap space. Let's throw in Brett Howden's five-year, $2.5 million AAV deal for good measure and see how much that constitutes in the salary cap realm. Those four players would combine for only 16.8% of the Vegas Golden Knights salary cap.
With all the talk about Mikko Rantanen searching for a heavy payday ($14 million AAV, maybe?), it puts into perspective how much it takes to read into future cap increases. If the Colorado Avalanche did their due diligence on not giving up, they could've gotten a deal done with their star forward. Instead, they got hasty and gave the Carolina Hurricanes a broken forward group. Not a great plan, Colorado.
Rantanen was willing to continue negotiating throughout the season with Colorado. In fact, both sides had more contract talks this past week. Just couldn't find enough common ground. The Avs, in the end, made the calculation they were never going to get there on a number...
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) January 25, 2025
Meanwhile, McCrimmon didn't waste time getting Theodore extended. He knew that this contract would become a bigger hometown discount for the defenseman over time, giving him more power to bolster the roster as he sees fit. But that's not the only benefit the general manager gets from the salary cap increase.