Breaking: Major announcement regarding the salary cap.

There is some big news out of the National Hockey League, big news, but certainly not good news for teams that are already up against the salary cap.

According to a report from Sportsnet hockey insider Elliotte Friedman the leaguer has informed it's franchises that their projection for the 2016-2017 salary cap were overzealous, and as a result have dropped that projection by $500,000, and it gets worse. This new estimate, the one $500,000 lower than was intiially projected, is assuming that the players will agree to a 5% growth factor, something that is far from guaranteed given players concerns with escrow.

More from Elliotte Friedman's 30 Thoughts:

Teams were told to expect a $74M salary cap, down $500,000 from the estimate given at December’s Board of Governors meeting. This assumes the players will vote in favour of using the “growth factor,” which increases the ceiling by five per cent.

Last year, there was plenty of noise they wouldn’t, since it increases escrow amounts. At they end of the day, they still agreed to raise the roof. There’s a lot of pressure to do it. It’s a pretty simple, but powerful message: why should the maximum room be available when you’re a free agent, and not someone else?

Teams that are currently up against the salary cap, or team's with major signing on the horizon(Steven Stamkos anyone?) have to view this as some seriously bad news.

[pub]