The best news the Edmonton Oilers could have received? They just got it.
This in from the National Hockey League today, “The NHL and NHLPA also announced that team payroll ranges for the next three seasons would be an Upper Limit of $95.5 million and a Lower Limit of $70.6 million next season; an Upper Limit of $104 million and a Lower Limit of $76.9 million in 2026-27 and an Upper Limit of $113.5 million in 2027-28 with a Lower Limit of $83.9 million.”
My take
1. The Oilers have an excellent chance to win the Stanley Cup this season because they’re still paying star players like Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard at a reasonable rate compared to other NHL stars.
But each of these three star players is due for a major raise, just as young players like Stuart Skinner and possibly Vasily Podkolzin and Ty Emberson will demand in the next few years.
The NHL salary cap has been relatively stagnant in recent years due to the financial losses of the COVID seasons, but new revenues are flooding in, prices have been jacked up, and the cap is going to get super-charged in the next three seasons, making it far more likely that the McDavid/Draisaitl Oilers can also compete successfully for the Stanley Cup in 2025-26, 2026-27 and especially 2027-28.
2. Edmonton already suffered a major hit due to the salary cap (and some inept managing) when St. Louis grabbed two excellent budding talents last summer, Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg. Without a rising cap, this kind of talent grab by predatory rivals would have been a constant threat. Now it’s less likely.
3. To win the Stanley Cup, an NHL team can’t do it like an NBA team with two or three superstars. The NHL teams need superstar players but those player are only on the ice for about a third to half the game. At other times, a winning team needs strong and reliable two-way players to take the ice. If an NHL team spends too much on its stars, it won’t have enough money under the cap to fill out its roster with reliable players.
4. In the salary cap era of the NHL starting in 2005-06, only three teams have won the Stanley Cup paying more than 45% of the salary cap to the Top Four players on the team: the 2007 Anaheim Ducks, the 2008 Detroit Red Wings, and the 2016 Pittsburgh Penguins.
On average, Stanley Cup-winning teams have paid 40.4 per cent of their salary cap to their Top Four.
Most recently, the Cup-winning 2022 Colorado Avs paid 38.7 per cent of its cap to Mikko Rantanen, 11.3%, Cale Makar, 11%, Gabriel Landeskog, 8.7%, and Nathan MacKinnon, 7.7%.
Vegas in 2023 paid 41.5% to its Top Four of Jack Eichel, 12.1%, Mark Stone, 11.5%, Alex Pietrangelo, 10.7% and William Karlsson, 7.2%.
Florida paid 44.3% to its Top Four of Alexander Barkov, 12%, Sergei Bobrovsky, 12%, Matthew Tkachuk, 11.4%, and Aaron Ekblad, 9%.
5. For the Oilers to compete, NHL playoff history tells us its best that they’re near or under that 45% mark. And they were just that last playoff season, with the Top Four making 43.4%, Connor McDavid taking 15%, Darnell Nurse, 11.1%, Leon Draisaitl, 10.2% and Mattias Ekholm, 7.2%.
This season Edmonton’s Top Four is taking just 41.2% of the $88.5 million salary cap, McDavid, 14.2%, Nurse, 10.5%, Draisaitl, 9.7% and Ekholm, 6.8%.
This year represents a brilliant window of opportunity for the Oilers with all of Top Four stars still playing at peak level but getting paid at a reasonable level by NHL Cup-winning standards.
6. If the cap had gone up to only $95 million next year and $100 million the year after, Edmonton would have been paying its Top Four around 50% of the cap, which would have greatly limited Edmonton’s chances. If Bouchard and McDavid get healthy raises, as Draisaitl did stating next year, Edmonton will be in tough territory when it comes to winning the Cup in 2026 and 2027, paying about 47 to 48% of its cap to its Top Four. But by 2028 that will drop to just 43.4% of the cap, putting Edmonton in solid territory when it comes to its chances of winning.