The salary cap goes up yet again, this time to $104 million. For the few teams that know how not to spend there, the floor is $76.9 million. Yes, that means more money for GMs to make bad spending choices - and rest assured, they will.
The season expands from 82 games to 84 games, because … rea$on$.
There’s a Heritage Classic this year, on October 25 at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg between Montreal and the host Jets.
The international games are in Helsinki, Finland on November 12 and 14 between Carolina and Seattle, and then December 18 and 20 in Dusseldorf, Germany between Chicago and Ottawa.
The Winter Classic is December 31 in Salt Lake City, where Utah will play Colorado at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Utah’s appearance means every NHL team will have played in at least one outdoor game.
There’s a Stadium Series game on February 20 at Jerrah World between Dallas and Vegas.
The All-Star Game is February 6, with the Islanders hosting. It’s a 5-team, round-robin format featuring the U.S., Canada, Finland, Sweden and “Rest of the World” in 3-on-3, 5-minute games and the top-2 teams play a 10-minute “championship” game. Which, I guess is better than the divisional-based games where guys got to play 10 minutes and half were done, but I and most other fans probably still won’t care about this format.
The regular season starts TBD, likely late September.
The next time the owners complain about having to spend money and demand the players take more concessions on contracts, the NHLPA should remind them “we didn’t make you lob a 5-year, $90 million offer sheet with practically all signing bonus to a 3rd overall pick who just came off his entry-level contract, has never been a point-per-game player, and has never scored 30 goals.”
After the Celebrini and Carlsson contracts, I hear people saying “the economics of the NHL are broken.” Probably the same people who think limiting contract lengths to 5 years is a good idea, who also applauded limiting contracts to 7 (8 if it’s your team) years.
If Celebrini could sign for 9-10 years, I doubt he’s taking $18.8M per for that. Yes, I know - he could have signed for more; $18.8M was already a discount. But for the security of an extra 4-5 years, maybe he’s more like $15-16M per. The point here is that shortening max contract lengths incentivizes players to get every dollar possible now since there’s a reduced safety of guaranteed dollars down the road. In turn, it reduces cap flexibility for teams and makes the salary cap more firm.
But, the NHL “fixed” the “problem” of fans’ feelings being hurt because someone signed for 12-13 years knowing the league would permissibly let the team park the guy on LTIR for some bullshit thing for the last few years if necessary to open up cap space / let the team ship the guy off to some cellar-dwelling team that didn’t care about having cap space eaten up on a no-show … and really, that’s the most important thing. All the other problems that arise as a result will be fixed with similar non-solutions.
Really, who could have predicted that a guy who at 33 had sports hernia surgery, then at 34 had double hip surgery, might be at risk for further surgeries and put the last 5 years of his 6-year contract in doubt.
Well, at least we fixed the real problem with contract lengths in hockey: those 22, 23, 24-year olds getting 9, 10, 11, 12-year contracts. The guys who are 36, 37 getting signed to 6, 7-year deals where it’s incredibly likely they’ll end up parked on LTIR Island? That’s fine.
Sometimes, I shake my head at what teams will lob for someone else’s player. This is one of those times.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Evangelista is a decent hockey player with some upside yet, and yes we’re talking about Colorado’s 1st in '28 which will probably be 28th or beyond, but this isn’t the Devils team from 3 years ago that put up 112 points in the regular season and then got swatted by Carolina in the 2nd round. Nor will it be that team this year, or the year after.
Carolina gets to raise the banner, then started this 84-game season against Florida. About 2 hours later, William Nylander scored the first goal of the NHL season in the Toronto/Montreal game.
I really thought ESPN was jinxing things, because through about 120 minutes of game time it had televised there had been exactly one (1) goal - but then Boston remembered “oh yeah, the Rangers suck.”
Edmonton: Bouchard with 3-2-5, Oilers still lose. Glad to see they’re picking up where all the prior seasons left off.
3 games tonight. Really glad the NHLPA fixed all their concerns about compressed scheduling and the possible toll on players, by … [checks notes] not doing a fucking thing about it, which allows Toronto to open the season playing on the first 2 nights and the Flyers to play tonight and tomorrow night before some teams have played the first game.
Play early now, get more days off later. It’s a zero-sum (or some equal sum) game between yesterday and … 4/10/2027.
Major stat is length of season in days versus number of games. Didn’t they add two games?
Flyers fans who sat through all 60 minutes of a 7-0 ass-beating by Pittsburgh should get a free ticket to a future Flyers game, along with free concessions for that game.
