NHL announces a lower-than-expected salary cap for next season

The NHL, being the hilarious league that it is, headed into its draft without a set salary cap for the upcoming season. This means that teams looking to make trades on the draft floor had to do so without knowing their max salary number, which is...not ideal.

Of course, the teams could estimate, but that’s beside the point: it’s absurd that it took the league and the NHLPA this long to set a number.

Regardless, we have a number now: the 2019-2020 salary cap will be $81.5 million, with the salary floor being $60.2 million.

The cap figure is around $1.5 million less than the $83 million that had been bandied about earlier this week, and is much lower than the $85 million that was speculated upon in the middle of last season.

Per Cap Friendly, the Bruins have a little less than $69 million (nice) committed in salary next season. That number excludes all pending free agents, namely:

• Danton Heinen (RFA)
• Noel Acciari (UFA)
• Marcus Johansson (UFA)
• Steven Kampfer (UFA)
• Brandon Carlo (RFA)
• Charlie McAvoy (RFA)

It’s not quite a desperate situation, but the Bruins basically have $13 million to sign Carlo (a must), McAvoy (a must), Heinen (a must), Acciari (maybe), and Johansson (probably not).

Kampfer is likely to move on, though anything is possible.

Buckle up!

If that makes you nervous and you need to laugh, the Leafs have around $1 million more in cap space (EDIT: They actually might have more like $6 million in space once they LTIR Nathan Horton) but need to sign Mitch Marner, Kasperi Kapanen, and Andreas Johnsson; they also only have 5 defensemen under contract. Have fun, Leafs!