When Did the NHL Salary Cap Start?
Contents
The NHL salary cap is a system put in place to ensure that all teams in the National Hockey League have a level playing field when it comes to player salaries.
The NHL lockout in 2004
In 2004, the NHL had a lockout that canceled the entire season. This was done in order to try to control player salaries, which were growing at an unsustainable rate. As part of the new labor agreement that ended the lockout, a salary cap was put in place.
The salary cap is a hard cap, meaning that there is a limit on how much a team can spend on player salaries in a given season. The cap for the 2020-21 season is $81.5 million. The salary cap has helped to control player salaries and has helped to create a more level playing field in the NHL.
The new NHL collective bargaining agreement
In the new NHL collective bargaining agreement, a salary cap was put into place for the 2005-2006 season. It was a hard salary cap, meaning that there were severe penalties for going over the salary cap. The salary cap was set at $39 million per team for the 2005-2006 season.
The NHL salary cap
The NHL salary cap is a system used in the National Hockey League (NHL) to keep team spending on player salaries under a certain amount. The salary cap was first introduced for the 2005–06 season and increased each year until the 2012–13 season, when it reached $60 million per team. In 2013, the NHL salary cap was reduced to $64.3 million due to the NHL players’ strike.
The NHL entry-level salary cap
In the summer of 2005, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) negotiated a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which included several changes to player salaries and benefits, including the introduction of a salary cap.
The salary cap was set at $39 million per team for the 2005-06 season, with a floor of $28.1 million. The cap rose to $50.3 million in 2007-08 and has continued to increase in subsequent seasons, reaching $69 million for 2013-14. The salary floor also increased over time, reaching $44 million for 2013-14.
The salary cap applies to all players, including rookies on entry-level contracts. Rookie contracts are limited to a maximum of three years under the CBA, so they fall under a separate set of rules known as the “entry-level system”.
Under the entry-level system, rookies are paid a fixed salary for each season of their contract, with annual raises limited to 10% of their base salary in the previous season. In addition, bonuses (including signing bonuses) are capped at 10% of the value of the contract. These restrictions allow teams to manage their finances more effectively and prevent them from paying exorbitant salaries to unproven players.
The NHL salary floor
In the Collective Bargaining Agreement that followed the NHL lockout of 2004-05, the NHL and NHLPA agreed to institute a salary floor. The floor has varied over the years in order to ensure that all teams spend at or above a certain percentage of the league-wide salary cap, which itself has also varied.
The current salary floor is $60 million, meaning that every team must have a payroll of at least that much for the 2018-19 season. The current salary cap is $79.5 million, meaning that teams can spend up to that much on player salaries for the 2018-19 season.
