For the first time in NHL history the salary cap is cracking US$100 million, jumping to $104 million for the 2026-27 season, and that changes how all 32 teams build a roster.

It caps two decades of growth from the $39 million limit the league launched with back in 2005-06.

The tracker sites do a fine job of listing live team-by-team cap space, so we won't duplicate them here. What they don't do is explain how the number actually gets set, why it's suddenly rocketing, and what the new playoff rules mean in practice. That's the job of this page, starting with the basics.

What Is the NHL Salary Cap?

The NHL salary cap is a league-wide limit on how much every team can spend on player salaries in a season. It sets an upper limit (the ceiling) no club can exceed and a lower limit (the floor) every club must reach, negotiated between the NHL and the players' union, the NHLPA, through the collective bargaining agreement.

The cap applies equally to every NHL franchise, so a big-market team in New York works under the same ceiling as a small-market club in Winnipeg. That's the whole point. The league brought it in to stop the richest owners simply buying the best roster.

One wrinkle trips up most new fans: the cap doesn't count the cash a player is paid in a given year. It counts each contract's cap hit, which is the average annual value across the whole deal. We'll unpack that further down, because it explains most of the confusing headlines you'll read in free agency.

How the NHL Salary Cap Number Gets Set

The cap is tied directly to hockey-related revenue, the league-wide pool of money from broadcast deals, tickets, sponsorships and merchandise. Players and owners split that revenue 50/50 under the CBA, and the cap is the mechanism that enforces the split.

From the projected revenue the league calculates a midpoint for team payrolls. The floor sits at 85 per cent of that midpoint and the ceiling at 115 per cent. For 2026-27 the midpoint is $90.4 million, which produces the $76.9 million floor and the $104 million ceiling.

A portion of player pay is also held in escrow each season, then settled once actual revenue is counted, so the 50/50 split stays exact even when projections miss.

As for why the number is suddenly climbing so fast, revenue is booming. The league banked a record haul of roughly $6.2 billion in 2023-24 on the back of new US media rights money plus jersey and board advertising, so in January 2025 the NHL and NHLPA locked in cap figures for three seasons at once. Teams had never had that sort of forward visibility before.

NHL Salary Cap History: From $39 Million to $104 Million

The cap arrived after the 2004-05 lockout wiped out an entire season, the price of labour peace between the owners and the NHLPA. Since then the ceiling has moved like this:

• 2005-06: $39 million, the cap's first season
• 2019-20 to 2022-23: flat at $81.5 million for four seasons as COVID smashed league revenue
• 2024-25: $88 million ceiling, $65 million floor
• 2025-26: $95.5 million ceiling, $70.6 million floor
• 2026-27: $104 million ceiling, $76.9 million floor, the first time past $100 million
• 2027-28: $113.5 million ceiling and $83.9 million floor, agreed but still subject to minor revenue-based adjustment

Those last three rises of $7.5 million, $8.5 million and $9.5 million are the biggest consecutive jumps since the cap began, which tells you everything about where the league thinks its revenue is heading.

The 2026-27 Numbers: Ceiling, Floor and Max Player Salary

The headline season in detail. The 2026-27 ceiling lands at $104 million, up $8.5 million on 2025-26, while the floor climbs $6.3 million to $76.9 million. Every club has to fit its full roster under the first number and spend at least the second.

The maximum any individual player can earn is capped at 20 per cent of the ceiling, so 2026-27 also brings the first $20 million-plus max salary in league history at $20.8 million.

Nobody is on that money yet. Kirill Kaprizov's $17 million a year extension with the Minnesota Wild kicks in as the biggest cap hit in the league.

How much room each club has left varies wildly, and it shapes everything from trade deadline activity to which teams can chase free agents.

If you follow the league closely enough to have a punt on futures markets, our guide on how to bet on the NHL covers the markets that cap moves tend to shift.

Cap Hit vs Actual Salary: How AAV Works

Here's the wrinkle we flagged earlier. A contract's cap hit is its average annual value, meaning the total value divided by the number of years. A player on an eight-year, $80 million deal carries a $10 million cap hit every single season, even if the actual cash paid varies year to year.

That's why teams historically front-loaded contracts, paying stars big money early while the cap hit stayed flat.

The new CBA shuts most of that down, since deferred salary was banned from October 2025 and front-loaded structures follow from September 2026.

A couple of related terms you'll see constantly: entry-level contracts limit what young players can earn in their first NHL deal, while restricted and unrestricted free agency govern when a player can shop himself around. All of it counts against the cap the same way, through the AAV.

Is the NHL Salary Cap Hard or Soft?

Hard. Unlike the NBA, where teams can spend past the cap and cop a luxury tax, NHL clubs simply cannot exceed the ceiling during the regular season. There is no tax, no exception fund, no workaround for a generous owner.

The one relief mechanism is long-term injured reserve, or LTIR, which lets a team replace a player facing an extended stint on the sidelines.

It's tightly regulated rather than a soft-cap loophole, and the new CBA tightened it further by capping the replacement's cap hit at around $3.82 million instead of the injured player's full number. Which leads neatly into the biggest change of all.

The New Playoff Cap Counting Rule and 2026 CBA Changes

For 20 years the salary cap only applied to the regular season. Teams could park a star on LTIR, spend his cap space at the trade deadline, then activate him for game one of the playoffs and ice a roster worth well beyond the ceiling.

Fans called it LTIR stacking, and several recent Stanley Cup winners leaned on it.

That door is now shut. Playoff Cap Counting, agreed in the memorandum of understanding signed alongside the CBA extension on 27 June 2025, was fast-tracked into force for the 2026 playoffs.

Teams must now submit a cap-compliant playoff lineup of 18 skaters and two goalies to the league's Central Registry ahead of every game, with the lineup's Averaged Club Salary required to fit under the ceiling.

The wider CBA extension runs from 16 September 2026 through 15 September 2030 and brings a stack of other changes for 2026-27: an 84-game regular season with a shorter preseason, maximum contract terms cut to seven years for re-signing players and six for those joining new clubs, and a league minimum salary rising in stages towards $1 million by 2029-30.

Expect the playoff rule to bite hardest at the trade deadline, because contenders can no longer bank on cap-free postseason rosters when weighing up a big swing.

For how the postseason itself works from a punting angle, our guide to betting on the NHL playoffs runs through the formats and markets.

NHL Salary Cap FAQ

Who is the highest-paid NHL player?

From 2026-27 the biggest cap hit in the league belongs to Kirill Kaprizov at $17 million a year on his Minnesota Wild extension. The leaderboard changes with every monster extension, so check a live cap tracker for the current figure.

What is the maximum salary allowed in the NHL?

A single player's cap hit cannot exceed 20 per cent of that season's ceiling. For 2026-27 that works out at $20.8 million, the first time the max has cleared $20 million.

Who was the first NHL player to make $1,000,000 a year?

Depends how you count it. Bobby Orr signed the NHL's first million-dollar contract in 1971, though it paid $200,000 a season across five years rather than a million annually. Bobby Hull was the first to pocket a cool million in one hit, via the famous 1972 signing bonus that lured him to the WHA's Winnipeg Jets.

What was the NHL salary cap when it started?

$39 million per team in 2005-06, introduced after the lockout wiped out the entire 2004-05 season. The 2026-27 ceiling of $104 million is nearly triple that.