According to a report from TSN hockey insider Darren Dreger, teams across the National Hockey League might be able to put a little bit more of their operating income towards on-ice talent next year. Based on hockey-related revenue to start the season, the league is projecting a cap increase of as much as $4M US.

Of course, this requires the league to keep pulling in income, so a falling dollar or people beginning to stop attending games of a certain British Columbian hockey team could get in the way of progress. But a cap spike could be a good thing for a lot of teams.

Vancouver aren’t quite in a vulnerable position but certainly wouldn’t complain if they had some wiggle room next year. The Canucks currently have $72.4 million committed, a figure that technically puts them over the cap, but can be shaved down with some trickery until the end of the year.

As far as players currently on the roster, Vancouver is in a position to shed a lot of cap space as it is. Radim Vrbata ($5 million), Brandon Prust ($2.5M), and Dan Hamhuis ($4.5M) are all unlikely to repeat their cap hits, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see a couple of Adam Cracknell ($575k), Matt Bartkowski ($1.75M), Yannick Weber ($1.5M), and Alex Biega ($600k) walked away from. From there, the only two RFA’s who need new deals are Sven Baertschi and Ronalds Kenins, and neither of them are due for huge raises.

This gives the Canucks room to try to retool on the fly in July, or more sensibly, take on a bad short-term contract or two in order in an effort to get additional assets from a such a move. If a full-scale rebuild is the direction the team goes, they’ll have lots of room to spend a few years down the line as long as they stay conservative and the cap continues to grow. More room for other teams will also make the more inclined to acquire players from other teams, which could bode well if the Canucks want to trade anyone with contracts that spill into 2017 and beyond.

The cap floor, in this case, would be a little under $60 million. Typically, its $16 million more than the ceiling, but the league has been a bit more flexible in the past couple of years.