Salary Cap Announcement Puts Maple Leafs in Precarious Position with Mitch Marner

There had been rumours circling for weeks on end, but it does sound like the NHL's salary cap is going to rise exponentially over the next couple of seasons to heights that we never even considered.

After having to deal with a stagnant cap for several seasons, the NHL finally dug itself out of it's COVID-19 hole and saw slight increases before jumping over $4 million dollars heading into the 2024-25 season.

With that sudden increase, we saw teams spending money at an alarming rate, to a point where over $1 billion dollars worth of contracts were signed on the first day of free agency.

Fast forward to earlier today and with the recent figures tweeted out by insiders like Elliotte Friedman and Frank Seravalli, we are about to bear witness to some of the most ludicrous contracts handed out in NHL history.

Ahead of the 2025-26 season, the cap will rise from $88 million to an upper limit of $95.5 million, an increase of $7.5 million. Following that, the 2026-27 season will have an upper limit of a staggering $104 million. Even that pales in comparison to what we'll see for the 2027-28 season, which will be an upper limit of $113.5 million.

Seravalli also points out that these aren't projections or estimates because these in fact are the agreed upon numbers between the NHL and NHLPA. However, there is still the caveat that it is subject to a minor increase or decrease, but that was expected.

Now, what this means for the next batch of superstars in line for extensions remains to be seen, but you can make the correlation that they will be in line for some of the biggest contracts in the history of the game.

The elephant in the room for the Toronto Maple Leafs is what they're going to have to give Mitch Marner if they decide to keep him around for the foreseeable future.

Rumours have speculated that he wants an AAV closer to Auston Matthews' $13.25 million than William Nylander's $11.5 million and the recent salary cap figures will only help his side of the argument.

An important bit of information to keep in mind is that most of the core pieces of the team are signed through 2026-27 and even 2027-28 outside of Mitch Marner, John Tavares, and Matthew Knies.

All three have expiring contracts at the end of this season, but with the cap going up to $95.5 million, the Leafs have a lot of cap space to play with.

Marner is definitely in an advantageous position because he can shoot for the stars and still land on the moon on his next deal. Players like Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, and Leon Draisaitl have set the bar for the previous market, but all of that washes away when you can factor in a $25 million dollar increase within 3 seasons.

With the sudden spike over the course of the next 3 seasons, negotiations with Marner's camp will become a little more difficult to deal with as a $13 million to $14 million AAV seems more plausible now than ever before. Knowing what we know now about the rising cap, he may even seek as much as $15 million per season. However, as long as there's interest coming from both sides, a happy medium can assuredly still be found while also retaining the services of Tavares and Knies.