Drastic change in NHL salary cap projections for next season.

As many of you reading this already know, the National Hockey League's salary cap is projected to explode over the course of the next three seasons. We have already seen the impact of these projections across the NHL landscape during the offseason with huge contracts handed out across the league, including Kirill Kaprizov's record setting $136 million contract with the Minnesota Wild.

Now however there are rumblings that those projections may not have been accurate with a drastic shift being reported by one of the NHL's top insiders. On Monday morning, NHL insider Elliotte Friedman revealed that he has been hearing rumblings that the numbers forecast for the 2026-27 NHL season might have actually been too low.

"I've had a couple people mention the number 107 to me," revealed Friedman on the 32 Thoughts podcast.

The initial projection would have seen the cap rise to $104 million and a jump to $107 million would represent an increase of $3 million over the initial projections. When you consider the fact that big budget teams were already rumored to be looking forward to a chance to flex their financial muscles, while smaller teams were concerned about the rapidly rising cap, this could have a drastic impact on how teams around the league operate.

Friedman revealed that his sources for this information were the same sources that revealed to him last year that the cap was about to explode, information that we of course now know was completely correct.

"It's the same people who told me last year that the cap would be jumping significantly higher and they turned out to be right," said Friedman.

Smaller market teams who have genuine concerns about the rapidly rising cap may be in for some difficult days ahead with Friedman indicating that the other projections may have been too low as well. Friedman wouldn't give a specific number, citing that he wasn't comfortable enough to put out a prediction just yet, but did indicate that his sources are pointing to that eventuality.

"Some people who really think even the year after where it's [penciled in] for $113 [million] could go even higher, but I don't really have a specific number and I'm not willing to go that far yet."

This will be something to watch closely for hockey fans as teams began to separate themselves into different categories as the salary cap explodes over the next several seasons.