NHL salary cap officially set at $81.5 million for 2019-20

Toronto Maple Leafs winger Mitch Marner. (Winslow Townson/AP)

With the NHL Draft wrapped, we now know how much money GMs have to work with under next season’s salary cap.

Anticipation was building that next year’s salary cap would fall short of previous projections and that was confirmed Saturday when the ceiling was officially set at $81.5 million.

As a result, we know the salary floor will come in at $60.2 million.

Previous projections had the upper limit at $82 million, so GMs will have a little less space to operate under with free agency a little more than a week away. As of Saturday afternoon, according to CapFriendly, the Vegas Golden Knights are the only team currently above the upper limit, sitting with an $83.1 million cap hit. They also have four of their own RFAs still to sign, including William Karlsson, but could also still put David Clarkson’s $5.25 million cap hit on LTIR so it doesn’t count against their number.

CapFriendly also has six teams currently under the salary floor — Philadelphia, Winnipeg, New Jersey, Columbus, Ottawa and Colorado. Each of those teams still have some of their own free agents to sign, however.

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