Salary Cap changes coming will save Oilers with Bouchard and McDavid contracts
The Edmonton Oilers will have a major salary cap crunch coming in the next few seasons with new contracts for Evan Bouchard, Connor McDavid, Stuart Skinner, and Draisaitl's raise - but that may get help from an increasing salary cap.
NHL insider Elliotte Friedman has previously hinted at a rising salary cap over the next few seasons, and it looks like it may become a reality.
Rising Salary Cap Will Help Oilers Retain All of their Elite Talent
Player agent Alan Walsh appeared on the Steve Dangle Podcast recently, and backed Friedman's report expecting the largest jump in salary cap in NHL history this offseason - from $88M to $97M.
At the end of this season, the Oilers most important contract to sign will be star defenceman Evan Bouchard, who is estimated to be asking for $10-11M in salary. Next will be defenceman Ty Emberson, soon to sign a new deal.
This salary cap increase may be the factor that gives the Oilers enough salary cap space to be able to sign Bouchard to his next contract.
After Bouchard and Emberson, the Oilers will have $6.5M to replace or re-sign Jeff skinner, Corey Perry, Kasperi Kapanen, and Connor Brown.
Edmonton Oilers will be able to afford raises for each core player
But the Oilers cap crunch won't end with Bouchard, either. They've already given a significant raise to Draisaitl and will to Bouchard, but then Connor McDavid and Stuart Skinner will be right behind for big raises.
Thankfully, Elliotte Friedman expects the cap to rise again the following offseason, this time to a ceiling of $110M. That would give the Oilers an extra $13M for raises on McDavid and Skinner's next contracts.
- Elliotte Friedman
The increasing salary cap is going to be a great thing for many teams to spend more and promote more aggressive moves in trades, but for the Oilers, it will be well worth it just to re-sign their current elite core players in McDavid and Bouchard.
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