NEW YORK — The NHL’s salary cap could jump more than $4 million next season if the league meets its revenue forecast.
“We believe there is a good chance that the escrow will be paid this season. Which means the hard cap would be replaced with a larger increase,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said after the league’s board of governors meeting Tuesday in Manhattan.
The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association signed a new collective bargaining agreement in 2020. They agreed to keep the salary cap at $81.5 million until hockey-related revenue exceeds $3.3 billion. dollars for the previous season. The salary cap increased for the first time in this CBA this season, up $1 million to $82.5 million.
The “flat cap” was necessary because players owed an estimated $1 billion in debt to owners due to lost team revenue related to the COVID-19 pandemic. When this debt is repaid in full, the ceiling changes to a “calculation ceiling” linked to income. Bettman said he believes the debt could be paid off this season, with the cap increasing to between $4 million and $4.5 million for the 2023-24 season, which is ahead of schedule.
Bettman said revenue was “pretty buoyant” and the league generated about $5.4 billion in hockey-related revenue last season, about half a billion dollars more than the NHL had expected. .
The commissioner said full debt repayment by the end of the season “is going to be close”. If that doesn’t happen, the salary cap will only increase by $1 million for 2023-24.
The problem of Russia during the World Cup
The NHL plans to hold the next World Cup of Hockey in February 2024, but some of the nations expected to participate are raising protests over the involvement of Russian players.
“The conflict in Ukraine makes it difficult to deal with the Russian issue. We have certainly heard from some of the countries that would participate [in the World Cup] that they would have objections to Russian participation,” Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said.
The NHL had planned some kind of adjustment to the status of the Russian team if Russia’s war against Ukraine was still going on at the time of the World Cup. Initially, the hope was that Russian players would simply play under a neutral name or flag, much like they did at the Olympics after the Russian Olympic Committee was suspended in a doping scandal. But Daly said other World Cup countries weren’t happy with that.
“We considered this as an alternative. From what I understand to be the concerns, it doesn’t appear to be a solution for other countries,” Daly said.
The NHL said the objections are a “relative fact” in the decision-making process regarding the Russian players’ participation, but no decision on their status has been made – and no plans regarding Cup logistics of the world was finalized with just over a year before. the event is scheduled.
Ian Cole Investigation
The NHL Board of Governors has not received a report on the investigation into Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Ian Cole, but Bettman has addressed its potential fallout.
The NHL said Saturday it found no evidence to support the sexual misconduct allegations against Cole, which were made anonymously on social media. The Lightning then reinstated Cole, who had been suspended with pay by the team and missed the first three games.
Bettman said Jared Maples, the NHL’s chief security officer, and David Zimmerman, the league’s chief legal officer, “conducted as thorough an investigation as you can get from an anonymous tweet.”
The NHLPA issued a statement after Cole’s reinstatement that “players should never be subject to suspension or disciplinary action in response to unfounded and anonymous accusations” and that “removing a player from his team under these circumstances is inappropriate and totally unfair”.
Bettman said he respects the union’s view on the matter, but supports Tampa Bay’s decision to suspend Cole.
“The Lightning decided that this might be a short-term distraction, and the clubs are free to do that,” Bettman said.
He said similar situations would be handled on a case-by-case basis in the future.
“At the end of the day, I’m always worried when allegations are made. But when they’re made anonymously, they’re pretty difficult to deal with,” Bettman said.
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