Report: NHL to increase salary cap by $8.5 million for 2026-27

Get ready for some eye-popping splurges during this summer’s NHL free agency period.

According to Elliotte Friedman, the NHL has informed teams that the salary cap for the 2026-27 season will reach an all-time high of $104 million.

According to Friedman, the salary floor, or the minimum amount of money a team is allowed to spend on its roster, will be $76.9 million. The maximum allowable salary allocated to any one player will be $20.8 million.

Next season’s $104 million salary cap will be $8.5 million more than the 2025-26 salary cap, which was $95.5 million. That $8.5 million increase is the largest year-to-year jump in the salary cap since its introduction in the 2005-06 season.

It will be interesting to see the effect the new triple-digit salary cap has on the contracts that will be handed out to unrestricted free agents this offseason. This summer’s crop of free agents isn’t exactly star-studded, with the likes of Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Darren Raddysh and Buffalo Sabres forward Alex Tuch acting as the default headliners. Still, those players are likely to get deals significantly larger than we’re used to seeing for free agents of their caliber.

This increase in the salary cap should also have a major impact on the UFA class of 2027, which, at least as things stand now, features stars such as Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov, Minnesota Wild defenseman Quinn Hughes, and Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, among others. The new cap, which figures to grow even more for the 2027-28 season, could incentivize those players to play out their current contracts in order to cash in as free agents next offseason, or be used in negotiations to get big-money extensions with their current teams.

Looking even further ahead, projected 2028 UFAs such as Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid and Toronto Maple Leafs forward Auston Matthews should be in for record-setting contracts.