It's hard to pinpoint the exact time in history when NHL GMs collectively learned some harsh realities of the salary cap, but here are two instances that stick out:
- Free Agency Frenzy 2016
- COVID-19 salary cap freeze
The year is 2016, and NHL GMs universally agree that the salary cap, which had been put in place coming out of the 2004 lockout, would go up as it does just about every year like clockwork. To stay competitive in the marketplace, front offices across the NHL disastrously spent big on big-name players with little star power. Perhaps no year was as embarrassing as 2016, when the likes of Kyle Okposo, Milan Lucic, Loui Eriksson, David Backes, and Andrew Ladd. Each player signed contracts of at least five years and at least $5.5M AAV.
Wow! What could go wrong?
In the spring of 2020, when the world was shut down due to COVID-19, the NHL froze salary cap increases for what ended up being two full seasons. With revenues down across the league, how could one justify an increase in future player salaries?
Now, in the summer of 2022, it seems like most of the NHL is in salary cap prison. Hell, one could argue that the entire reason that the Columbus Blue Jackets were the winners of the Johnny Gaudreau sweepstakes was because of their cap flexibility. Other teams, like the presumptive favorites to land Gaudreau, the Philadelphia Flyers, alleged that they couldn't even partake in making an offer as their cap circumstances wouldn't allow for it.
But the Blue Jackets weren't entirely immune to the after-effects of the Covid-related salary cap pause, and Oliver Bjorkstrand was a casualty, and the Seattle Kraken the beneficiaries of the suddenly-cap-strapped organization. Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen was devastated to move the winger, and many supporters of the club were upset.
The Athletic's Aaron Portzline reported that, in order to move on from Gus Nyquist, for instance, it would have had to be a pure salary dump, "meaning the Blue Jackets may have needed to include a top prospect (Marchenko) or a first-round pick to make it happen." This, to move on from a productive player at a reasonable $5.5M cap hit.
That type of move was completely foreign even a few years ago, and was typically reserved for injured players who would never play again or anchors who couldn't cut it at the NHL level any longer. Nyquist is neither of those things.
The salary cap has completely changed the landscape of trades across the NHL. Division rival Carolina acquired perennial 30-goal scorer Max Pacioretty from the cap-strapped Vegas Golden Knights, who had to also send along productive 24-year-old defenseman Dylan Coghlan... in exchange for literally nothing.
Nazem Kadri, who was in the MVP race midway through last season and was a key player for the Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche, didn't sign a contract until last week when the Calgary Flames finally stepped to the plate. After the signing, the Flames sent former-first-round pick Sean Monahan, on the final year of a deal that pays him $6.375M, as well as a future first-round pick, to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for ... literally nothing.
There has been a paradigm shift across the NHL. "Literally nothing" no longer means literally nothing; it now, more than ever, represents the flexibility to make your organization stronger by signing future players to appropriate contracts.
And that is worth literally everything.
