NHL makes an announcement: Canucks to get huge help

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Cooper Godin
October 2, 2024 (9:59)

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The National Hockey League is to help the Vancouver Canucks big time during the 2025-26 season.

While the 2024-25 season hasn't started just yet, the National Hockey League is already looking forward to 2025-26 and we may have an early look at what the salary cap may be next year.

National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman met with reporters while at the Board of Governors meetings and said that they're projecting the salary cap to rise to $92.5 million USD for the 2025-26 season, a $4.5 million jump when compared to 2024-25 and a $9 million jump in the last two seasons.

"Bettman says very very early ballpark salary cap figure for next season is $92.5 M
But again very preliminary he cautioned." according to Pierre LeBrun.

If the salary cap does indeed rise to $92.5 million USD for the 2025-26 season, it's certainly going to help a lot of teams around the league, including the Vancouver Canucks.

Oliver Ekman-Larsson's contract buyout is set to jump from $2,346,667 to $4,766,667, according to CapWages, so an extra $4.5 million is going to help the Canucks in a big way.

Aside from Oliver Ekman-Larsson's contract buyout, Vancouver Canucks General Manager Patrik Allvin has a number of key free agents he'll need to re-sign next summer, if he wishes, headlined by Brock Boeser. Other pending unrestricted free agents after this season for Vancouver include Pius Suter, Daniel Sprong, Derek Forbort, Noah Juulsen and Kevin Lankinen.

We'll have to wait and see what the official numbers regarding the salary cap for the 2025-26 season, which should be announced potentially as early as March 2025 when the National Hockey League holds its annual General Managers meetings. Given that we saw a $4.5 million USD rise between 2023-24 and 2024-25, it's safe to assume that the $92.5 million number thrown out as an early projection by Gary Bettman on Tuesday will end up being true.