Report: NHL Salary Cap Projected to Be Around $71 Million in 2014-15

The NHL is having Board of Governors meetings in Pebble Beach this week, and one of the many topics of discussion is the projected salary cap for the 2014-15 season.

According to TSN’s Darren Dreger, the cap ceiling for next year should be around $71 million, which is about $7 million higher than this season’s number.

[tweet https://twitter.com/DarrenDreger/status/410213323372634114 align=”center”]

An increase in the cap ceiling would also result in the salary floor rising.

[tweet https://twitter.com/JSportsnet/status/410234246687494144 align=”center”]

The new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that was reached in January of 2013 resulted in a $64.3 million cap for the 2013-14 campaign, but it appears that the decrease in the cap ceiling will be short lived.

The NHL’s new Canadian television deal with Rogers ($5.2 billion for 12 years) that starts in 2014-15, in addition to the league’s revenue growth could result in a cap of around $80 million in the not-so-distant future. James Mirtle of The Globe and Mail outlines what the cap ceiling may look like during the current CBA in the image below.

[tweet https://twitter.com/mirtle/status/405746823148470273 align=”center”]

It will be interesting to see how the increase in cap space impacts the 2014 free-agent class, which could include veteran stars such as Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Thomas Vanek, Paul Stastny, Marian Gaborik and Dion Phaneuf.