Salary Cap expected to increase to 84-88.2 Million Dollars for 2020-2021 season

Some important news has come out of the NHL’s General Manager meetings in Boca Raton Wednesday morning.

Eric Francis of Sportsnet has reported that the 2020-21 salary cap is projected to take a significant jump next season.

This rise in the salary cap could be a huge boost for the Vancouver Canucks when it comes to re-signing some of their pending restricted and unrestricted free agents.

Tyler Toffoli, Jake Virtanen, Zack MacEwen, Adam Gaudette, Tyler Motte, Oscar Fantenberg, Chris Tanev, Troy Stecher and Jacob Markstrom are all on expiring contracts and the Canucks will need to pinch their pennies to get a good portion of them re-signed.

The 2019-20 salary cap is 81.5 million dollars. That means the minimum bump would be 2.5 million dollars and the top end increase could be 6.7 million dollars.

The Canucks were set to be in a cap crunch, as most if not all of their expiring contracts will be looking for a raise this offseason. The added cap space could make things a tad bit easier to lock down some of this team’s core pieces.

The Canucks currently have $6,358,205 in dead cap space that includes Sven Baertschi’s contract in the AHL, Ryan Spooner’s buyout, and the recapture penalty on the Roberto Luongo contract.

This added cap space would help balance out some of those losses and with Baertschi and Spooner’s money coming off the books after the 2020-21 season it should open up more space for the Canucks to discuss contracts with the elite duo of Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes.

Pettersson and Hughes are RFA’s after the 2020-21 season and will be landing some massive sophomore contracts.

The Luongo recapture penalty comes off the books after the 2021-22 season and that will be a nice little bonus for a team that should be close to competing for a Stanley Cup.

Every team’s general manager is celebrating the rise in the salary cap today. The Canucks are one of the teams that need it the most with the large crop of pending free agents and gargantuan contracts coming down for Pettersson and Hughes a year and a half from now.