Bettman says NHL projects salary cap will increase by $1M next season

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said Tuesday the league currently projects the salary cap will increase by just $1 million next season.

Bettman did, however, leave room for the cap to increase to over $86 million should revenue exceed projections to the point where the players' escrow balance could be paid off, saying "we'll have to see."

Bettman said he projects the escrow balance will be $70 million by the end of the season.

The escrow balance is money owed from the players to the owners because revenues dropped during the pandemic, almost entirely due to games without fans. It started at $1.1B.

Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported in September that NHL teams had been given some guidance on where the cap could be going over the next few seasons, with projections of it rising to $83.5 million in 2023-24, between $87.5 million and $88 million in 2024-25, and approximately $92 million by 2025-26.

Then, at the NHL's board of governors meeting in October, Bettman made a surprise announcement that the salary cap could jump even higher in 2023-24, saying there was a "good probability" the players' escrow balance would be paid off by the end of this season.

"We know it's going to go up a million dollars at least, the question is: Could it go up three or four? ... The key thing I keep hearing is, it's close, it's going to be close. I had one executive who said to me he thinks it could come down to how many high-revenue teams makes the playoffs," said Friedman on Sunday.

The salary cap for the current 2022-23 season is $82.5 million, a $1-million increase after the cap ceiling remained stagnant for three seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, the cap ceiling rose every season from 2013-14 until 2019-20.

With files from Elliotte Friedman