NHL salary cap rising from $81.5 million to $82.5 million in 2022-23

In August 2021, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli reported the NHL salary cap was projected to rise from $81.5 million to $82.5 million for the 2022-23 season.

The projection is now official. On Tuesday, from the NHL’s GM meetings in Florida, The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun reported that NHL GMs have officially been told by the league that the salary cap will rise by $1 million to $82.5 million for next season.

As previously reported by Seravalli, the cap jump triggers the start of a “lag formula” as agreed upon in the collective bargaining agreement negotiations that took place before the NHL resumed play for the 2020 bubble tournament. The cap could climb $1 million each offseason until the escrow balance owed to the league’s owners is paid off.

The jump to $82.5 million will mark the first salary-cap increase since it rose from $79.5 million to $81.5 million between the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons. During the 2019-20 season, league revenue was healthy enough that the cap was projected at one point to rise to between $84 million and $88 million the following season, but the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. The cap has remained flat at $81.5 million for three consecutive seasons.