Report: Salary cap upper limit set at $69 million for 2014-15 season
The upper limit for the NHL salary cap is expected to be revealed officially at some point on Friday. For now, it seems as if the league's early estimates in the winter of 2013, which predicted a $71 million upper limit for the 2014-15 season, were seriously optimistic.
From Matthew Wuest of Capgeek.com:
Sources say the upper limit has been set at $69M.
— CapGeek (@capgeek) June 27, 2014
Wuest's report was confirmed by CBC's Elliotte Friedman, and has since been made official by a joint NHL/NHLPA release.
While a $69 million upper limit is still a significant increase on the $64.3 upper limit that teams operated under for the 2013-14 season, it's still less than was expected and less than where the upper limit was set for the lockout abbreviated 2012-13 campaign. The lower limit is also now set at $51 million for the 2014-15 league year.
It's also noteworthy that, before the Canadian dollar fell off a cliff this spring, teams spent several months operating under the assumption of a salary cap upper limit that would come in well north of $70 million. The salary cap bind that clubs like the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins now find themselves in, just got even tighter.