Could We See More Players Getting a Bigger Percentage of the Salary Cap?
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period was on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio Power Play Segment on Thursday with Steve Kouleas and Frankie Corrado and was asked about the new CBA in terms of the salary cap and could affect the max a player could get in terms of cap percentage.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
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Frankie Corrado: “So let’s say we do get that very significant jump in salary cap. And it happens in two years. There’s a lot of big name guys that just signed long-term extensions. You know, (Auston) Matthews, (William) Nylander, (Leon) Draisaitl. (Mikko) Rantanen is going to be up. (Mitch) Marner coming up now.
If you jump so much, so quickly. and all of a sudden now your 15% of the cap becomes so much more. Like, how do you see those guys that signed with the old CBA kind of reacting to players that are of lesser skill or significance than them making the same amount of money or more just because there’s more money to play with?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah, and you know what? I think that’s part of the reasoning from the NHLPA side, as to accepting a bridge, so to speak, in terms of the dollars and getting to that point. Because, if you’re sitting at $100 million, cap hit at 15% and the max right now that someone can sign is 20% of the cap.
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But most guys, (Nathan) MacKinnon’s last deal is 15% of the cap in year one of his deal that kicks in. Same with Draisaitl next year and so on and so on. So if you’re talking about that’s $15 million right there, just off 100. So the more increases, the more those dollars go up. Certainly, the NHLPA is cognizant of that, A, in terms of a big jump, but B, also trying to take into account how much of an inflator some of these salaries are going to be and how that looks on some of your other stars that have signed those big deals.
Now, some guys like Auston Matthews committed to a shorter term deal versus a max term of eight, partly because of him wanting to see how this next CBA was going to roll out, and partly because, I guess he wants to see how the Leafs they’re going to do. But that was in hindsight, and maybe they forecasted that. They seem to have forecasted that at the time, good business on their part, understanding that a new CBA is going to kick in with all the dollars that are being contributed as as part of it.
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So it’s definitely something that is part of the consideration. And again, you want to make sure from both sides, especially now, everything’s all kumbaya at the moment, you want to make sure that the dollars make sense on both sides of the equation, including salaries.”
