Breaking: Insider reports that the NHL's salary cap will increase next season
Despite some mid-season hiccups with fan attendance, it appears as though the NHL salary cap will still see an increase ahead of the 2022-23 season, per TSN's Chris Johnston on Thursday's edition of Insider Trading.
This is very important to the Toronto Maple Leafs, who are already in a cap crunch with several pending UFA's and RFA's in need of new contracts. There are a few candidates who may walk, including Ilya Mikheyev, who had requested a trade during the offseason. In terms of the RFA's, the Leafs have a few important ones, including Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren, both of whom could likely be given low-value bridge deals, but both Ondrej Kase and Pierre Engvall are eligible for arbitration, which could be a problem.
The good news for the Leafs is that, not only will they have an additional $1M to work with this summer, but the $1.2M annual salary retention on Phil Kessel will expire this summer as well.
The biggest question mark in all of this will be what happens with the Leafs' goaltending situation this summer. With Jack Campbell due a hefty raise and Petr Mrazek a likely cap casualty via either a buy out or an offseason trade, the Leafs will be able to open up some space. Will it be enough to re-sign Campbell and the majority of their pending free agents? We'll have to wait and see.
One interesting idea is that, should the Mark Giordano experiment be a successful one for the Leafs, perhaps he'd be willing to sign the Jason Spezza contract, which would allow the Leafs to trade Jake Muzzin and free up $5.625M through 2023-24. With the growth of Sandin and Liljegren and the departure of Travis Dermott, both youngsters are in line to begin taking on more responsibility. Freeing up the cap space currently allocated to Jake Muzzin could open up a world of possibilities for GM Kyle Dubas.
