Browsing: cap

Oct 20, 2025, 04:38 PM ET

Mjällby, a tiny team from a remote fishing village next to the Baltic Sea, won the Swedish league title on Monday for one of the most remarkable achievements in European soccer.

A 2-0 win at IFK Gothenburg on Monday ensured Mjällby held an unassailable 11-point lead with three rounds left in Sweden’s top league, Allsvenskan.

The improbable title triumph has been compared to Leicester winning the English Premier League in fairy tale fashion in 2016.

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It’s a first major trophy for Mjällby, a club from Sweden’s south coast whose team is made up of mostly locally born players, plays its home games in a 6,000-capacity stadium in the nearby village of Hällevik — population of around 800 inhabitants — and whose budget is far less than the biggest teams in the country.

“This was never something I thought would happen in my life,” said Mjällby striker Jacob Bergström, who scored one of the goals. “I’m so incredibly grateful to be part of this group. We show that the collective can take you incredibly far.”

Just nine years ago, Mjällby was one game away from dropping into Sweden’s fourth tier. The team stayed up, achieved back-to-back promotions in 2018 and ’19, and has been revitalized by the decision-making and strategies put in place by Magnus Emeus, a locally born businessman who became chairman in 2015.

This season, Mjällby — coached by Anders Torstensson, a school principal — has lost just one game and has 66 points, only one off Malmö’s record total in the 101-year history of Allsvenskan.

Mjällby will play in the Champions League qualifying rounds next season. It will be the first time the team has competed in European competition.

The match in Gothenburg was briefly delayed in stoppage time because some Mjällby fans climbed out of the stand housing visiting supporters, apparently ready to run onto the pitch in celebration. They returned to the stands after an appeal by Mjällby’s players.

Mjällby, a small team from a fishing village on the Baltic Sea, are champions of Sweden’s Allsvenskan. Getty Images

When the final whistle was blown, substitutes, coaches and members of the backroom staff sprinted onto the field to congratulate the team. They then ran toward the yellow-and-black-clad fans behind one of the goals to celebrate.

Founded in 1939, Mjällby has typically played outside the top flight, flitting around the regional leagues.

It plays home game in the picturesque, 6,000-capacity Strandvallen home, which is located in Hällevik — a remote, rural village beside the Baltic Sea where fishing has long been the predominant industry.

Torstensson is in his third stint as coach and his assistant is Karl Marius Aksum, who has a PhD in Visual Perception in Elite Football and had never coached at senior level before joining Mjällby.

Mjällby achieved a club-record 50 points when finishing in fifth place last season.

This season, Mjällby has conceded just 17 goals in 27 games.

Among its best players are Axel Noren, who recently received a first call-up by Sweden’s national team, and fellow defender Abdullah Iqbal, who is Pakistan’s captain.

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Dallas Mavericks minority stakeholder Mark Cuban denied the organization ran afoul of any NBA rules when it re-signed Dirk Nowitzki in 2014.

Appearing on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, Cuban called it “nonsense” that a production company he co-owned purchased a documentary about Nowitzki for way above market value as a way to circumvent the salary cap.

Cuban was once again a guest on Torre’s podcast to push back against the idea Los Angeles Clippers team governor Steve Ballmer knowingly paid star Kawhi Leonard through a sponsorship deal with Aspiration.

Starting at the 1:23:15 mark of the episode, Torre pivots to what some fans labeled a “sweetheart deal” between the Mavericks and Nowitzki in 2014.

The franchise legend took a massive pay cut as his salary fell from $22.7 million in 2013-14 to under $8 million the following year. Torre reported he turned down max offers from other teams, and his below-market contract allowed Dallas to land Chandler Parsons that summer.

Cuban asserted that Nowitzki “wanted Tim Duncan money,” a reference to how the San Antonio Spurs star took less toward the end of his run there.

The salary cap had remained around $58 million from 2010-14 and only rose to $63.1 million for 2014-15. At that time, aging stars such as Nowitzki and Duncan were incentivized to sign smaller contracts so their teams would have more flexibility to land other players.

This is where Nowitzki: The Perfect Shot comes in.

Magnolia Pictures, which Cuban co-owned, purchased the distribution rights, and some theorized the transaction was a way to give Nowitzki the money he had had on the table from other teams.

Torre confirmed the Magnolia deal actually totaled $100,000.

Even if the Mavs did violate NBA rules, it had little effect. They lost in the first round of the 2015 and 2016 playoffs, and then they missed the postseason altogether for three straight years.

But Torre and Cuban made it clear the conspiracy theories about Nowitzki’s 2014 return to Dallas were just that.

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The Cleveland Browns have featured a rotating carousel of quarterbacks throughout their history and have the infamous fan jersey to prove it, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising they are paying eight different signal-callers this year.

After Cleveland traded Joe Flacco to the Cincinnati Bengals, Michael Ginnitti of Spotrac provided an updated look at the overall cap hits for the eight different quarterbacks the Browns are paying:

It’s safe to say that’s not exactly how teams want their books to look, and the Deshaun Watson number in particular is an anchor on the salary cap and team’s overall outlook.

Cleveland surely envisioned him being the franchise cornerstone for years after acquiring him, but poor play, suspensions and injuries have prevented that from happening.

The team’s quarterback room was once again thrown under the spotlight this offseason when it decided to select Shedeur Sanders in the fifth round of the draft. That pick alone would have generated headlines given the amount of attention Sanders receives, but it came just two rounds after the Browns also took Dillon Gabriel.

Now even after the Flacco trade, there are plenty of fans paying attention to see if Sanders will eventually get an opportunity to play or if Gabriel will remain in the starting role.

At this point, the Browns are 1-4 and seem to already be playing out the string on what will be a lost season. Getting Gabriel and perhaps Sanders some experience will help them decide what to do with the position down the line, but there is no surefire answer in place providing reason for significant optimism moving forward.

Which is unfortunate for the front office because it is certainly paying enough quarterbacks to expect at least one long-term answer to emerge.

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If you’re a Pittsburgh Penguins’ fan, it’s probably hard to come away from this pre-season disappointed.

On Friday, the Penguins capped off their 5-1-1 pre-season with a 5-4 overtime comeback win against the Buffalo Sabres. Captain Sidney Crosby registered the game-winning goal – as well as the team’s tying goal in regulation – and Philip Tomasino, Harrison Brunicke, and Rickard Rakell also added tallies for the Penguins.

Tristan Jarry started the game in goal and allowed three goals on 19 Sabres’ shots, and Sergei Murashov came in relief midway through the second period and stopped 12 of 13.

The game got a little hairy in the middle of it, and there were some mistakes by the young guys, which I’ll get to momentarily. In a game that comprised mostly of NHL players on both sides, the Penguins’ prospects who were in the lineup put forth strong efforts once again, which is going to make for some difficult decisions for head coach Dan Muse and his staff leading up to Monday – which is when final NHL rosters need to be submitted.

“There’s going to be a lot of conversations here,” Muse said. “Starting into tonight, just with [Kyle Dubas] and management. There’s still some hard decisions to make. So, those decision are going to need to be made, and conversations are going need to be had, and we’re going to prepare.”

Here are some notes and observations from this one:

– This game was an utterly perfect example of why Brunicke needs to be on the opening night NHL roster.

First thing’s first: his goal was a thing of beauty, and it showcased why he’s such an intriguing, higher-ceiling defensive prospect. On the goal, Brunicke started at the right point then put his skating on display to weave past two Sabres along the wall and walk to the goal line, where he placed a perfect shot top-shelf over Alexander Georgiev’s shoulder from a bad angle.

But, this game was not without its mistakes for the young blueliner.

On Buffalo’s second goal by Tage Thompson, Brunicke was caught a bit when Ben Kindel turned the puck over at center ice. Brunicke allowed Thompson to get to the inside and lost him, leaving him exposed to the slot and the net-front. On Buffalo’s fourth goal – the second of the game by Jiri Kulich – he simply lost his man at the net-front, which also happened to be the goal-scorer.

Opinion: If Penguins Don’t Go Young With Roster, They’re Doing It Wrong
Just prior to the onset of training camp, Pittsburgh Penguins’ general manager and president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas took to the podium and made a declaration of sorts.

The point here is that these are defensive zone mishaps that are only going to get worse at the junior level. The kinds of mistakes he is making are ones that many young NHL defensemen make and improve upon with NHL experience.

What exactly is sending him back to the WHL going to teach him? His mistakes are coming as a result of either trying to do too much or defensive details. And both of those things are not things he’ll be improving upon by playing junior hockey against players younger and far less developed than he is. He needs to be reading off of, learning from, and playing against NHL competition.

If he is not on this roster when final rosters are submitted Monday, something is amiss.

– Speaking of youth mistakes, Ben Kindel had a bit of an up-and-down night as well. He did register the primary assist on Tomasino’s weird goal – extending his pre-season point streak to three games – but he also committed that crucial turnover on Thompson’s goal.

Kindel said it’s key to just “wash” those mistakes right after they happen and focus on the next shift. Brunicke echoed a similar sentiment. I asked Muse about how he and the coaching staff weigh the expectation that young players are going to make mistakes against their current evaluation process.

Should Ben Kindel Get The Nine-Game Trial? The Case For And Against
There are a lot of stories coming out of Pittsburgh Penguins’ training camp this year. Many of them involve young players making an impression and pushing for the NHL roster.

“It’s how they respond,” Muse said. “With Kindel, I thought his reponse was good. You go out there and make up for it. You’ve got to keep playing the game. Especially for a young guy, it’s, ‘How are they going to respond?’ And then, as you go through, you’re watching… Are we learning? Maybe the situational awareness, knowing where you are on a shift, knowing where you are on the ice… it’s our job to help them understand those things and understand it while not overthinking the game at the same time and not putting themselves where they’re able to go out there and play scared or play on their heels. That’s not what you want.”

I’m not exactly sure what to expect with Kindel when final rosters are revelaed. I believe that he has earned a look at the NHL level, even if it’s only for the nine games. He’s been that good in the pre-season, and it’s worth mentioning that he played in six of the seven games – which is usually a good indicator that the organization likes what it’s seeing.

But there are several young forwards deserving of a roster spot out of camp, too, and it will be interesting to see who comes out on top.

– Rakell has pretty consistently been killing penalties at this point, and man, has it been a treat to watch. He excels at pressuring guys one-on-one, he cuts off angles, his reads are excellent, and he takes it the other way for a scoring chance at least once per game.

I think this is going to be something that bleeds into the regular season, and I quite like Muse’s philosophy of deploying “power play guys” on the penalty kill. I think Bryan Rust will also continue to be part of that equation once he returns from injury.

Penguins Forward Bryan Rust Out Week-To-Week
The Pittsburgh Penguins will be without one of their best players to start the 2025-26 season.

– I said it in my last piece, but I really like the early returns on the Parker Wotherspoon and Erik Karlsson pairing. Wotherspoon is very non-eventful, and it’s working really well in tandem with Karlsson being very eventful.

I think it’s safe to say that this will be the first pairing when the regular season opens on Oct. 7.

– As far as line combinations, I’m curious to see what sticks. I do believe that the first line of Ville Koivunen, Crosby, and Rakell will be kept intact, as Koivunen has been pretty glued to Crosby throughout camp, and Rakell has always excelled on 87’s wing. It has the right recipe to be a pretty formidable line for the Penguins: Sidney Crosby, a playmaking specialist with excellent vision, and a strong finisher who excels at creating space.

I’m also intrigued by the third line, as Kindel, Tommy Novak, and Philip Tomasino – with a little bit of Avery Hayes sprinkled in – have been working together for the last several practices. Regardless of what combination of three has been working together, it’s gone relatively well in game action. Tomasino has had a strong camp, as have Kindel and Hayes. And I do think Novak’s pre-season got better as it bore on.

It’s probably reasonable to suggest that either Kindel or Hayes might occupy one of those spots as we move ahead to the regular season.

– I’ll keep this short and sweet, but I honestly have no idea what’s going to happen with the goaltending situation.

Murashov is the best goaltender in this organization, period. Will he supplant Jarry or Arturs Silovs, or will he get a run of development at the AHL level?

A few days ago, my answer was different. Now, I’m not so sure he won’t be in New York on Oct. 7.

Penguins’ Pre-Season: Final 23-Man Roster Prediction Edition
A few days ago, we had our Mailbox Monday, and I gave my final predictions for the Pittsburgh Penguins’ final 2025-26 roster.

– Speaking of pairings, Caleb Jones was – again – paired with Kris Letang, and Clifton played his off-side with Brunicke.

We’re reaching the point where we can, indeed, begin to read into some things. Because of the fact that Jones has been glued to Letang, I expect him to be on the roster. I don’t necessarily think he’s been one of the Penguins’ six-best defensemen in camp, but they seem to like what he brings to that pairing.

And I do think it’s interesting that we’ve seen Clifton play the off-side a few times, and same with Shea. Honestly, that alone bodes well for Brunicke, as he has stayed put on the right side along with Karlsson and Letang, who won’t miss out on a roster spot.

But the Jones situation does complicate things a bit for Brunicke. Matt Dumba has also had a good camp, Clifton showed well, and Ryan Shea has been good. Ryan Graves is also still part of the picture.

So, do the Penguins keep eight defensemen? And if so, who is the odd man out? What if they elect to keep 14 forwards?

There is a whole lot of intrigue to this roster situation. Monday can’t come soon enough. Stay tuned, folks.

Penguins Make Wave Of Roster Cuts, Place Six Players On Waivers
With each passing day, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ roster is coming more and more into focus.

Bookmark THN – Pittsburgh Penguins on your Google News tab  to follow the latest Penguins news, roster moves, player features, and more!

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For some time in the NHL now, players have signed contracts for the most total years they could get. That only made sense, right? The salary cap was flat, with little to no wiggle room, so if you found a team willing to commit a decent amount of money against that cap to you, you wanted to make them do it for as long as conceivably possible. It was security in a league that offers it to few.

Superstars did eight-year deals, and those contracts were the mark of having achieved true stardom. These were your no-doubters, your Hall-of-Fame contenders. There were rare exceptions such as Auston Matthews, whose agent Judd Moldaver apparently put some thought into getting to UFA and the chance to sign new deals sooner, particularly as the cap might move (all when the guy was still young), but he was part of a minority.

I get players not wanting to pass on guaranteed money, but if you truly believe youâ€re in the leagueâ€s upper percentile, man did the Matthews way always make sense to me. I got killed on my show for defending it (it was viewed as a lack of commitment, if I recall?), but it was always the most practical “commit to a team but also get paid-paid†decision. Heâ€s going to be a UFA in summer of 2028, and can re-sign on July 1 of 2027, when heâ€ll be 29 with a bajillion goals in the bank in a massively inflated salary cap environment.

It’s with that in mind that Iâ€ve seen some of the new deals some young stars are signing and thought ‘Boy … Are you sure?‘

The deals are long, and theyâ€re not just for proven superstars anymore.

And yet, Iâ€m not sure thatâ€s a win for those players in the same way that it used to be.

Luke Hughes just signed a contract worth $9 million per season for seven years, which takes him to age 29. Heâ€s super young to get a deal like that, and thatâ€s just awesome, of course. Who am I to sit here and say a kid at 22 shouldnâ€t take the security of $63 million dollars? Of course he should. Heâ€s set for life now.

Luke Hughes is also a big-bodied D-man who at age 20 put up just shy of 50 points, and he played at a slightly better pace the next year at age 21. If he signs for three or four or even five years at a lower AAV, what does his next deal look like at age 25 or 26 in this growing-crazier-by-the-day cap environment?

You canâ€t know, but if he gets at all better than heâ€s currently been – which is exceedingly likely given his age and position – that contract would come in the wake of a skyrocketing cap and deals to Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes that could set monstrous precedents. Regarding Makar, you can call it apples to oranges, but there’s not a team in the league that would take Kirill Kaprizov before Makar. Even if the Avs defender doesnâ€t get to $17 million a season, heâ€s certainly got a case for it.

By then, Luke Hughes might be worth … what? Could it be $13 million? 14? Iâ€d expect heâ€d make up a few lost million in the short term pretty quick and go racing by that $63 million number in the other direction. In a world where people have gotten annoying about saying “Bet on yourself,†Iâ€ve been surprised how few young stars have taken that course.

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Mason McTavish, fresh off 52 points with 22 goals during his age 21/22 season, just re-signed for six years and $7 million per year. Six years is better than seven, but it still feels like a lot to commit when your upside is so high.

This cap environment should shift the focus from dollars to term for the high end young guys.

Teams today are greatly incentivized to lock up their young talents before theyâ€ve proven all that much (beyond potential) in the NHL. That trade of “security†is their most valuable tool right now. Luke Hughes has been great, but has yet to be the cornerstone of a D-corps thatâ€s had success deep in the playoffs. And yet for teams, the value is that he hasnâ€tdone it yet. Theyâ€re learning that itâ€s time to pay for (just less than) what you expect players to do, rather than for what theyâ€ve done in the past. Theyâ€re hoping to get that “You actually havenâ€t done anything yet†discount.

If you look around the NHL, almost all of the best contracts are because GMs saw players about to blow up and paid them on the maximum term the players would give them, before the break out happened.

Nathan MacKinnonâ€s run of being staggeringly underpaid due to taking max term deals will continue almost immediately after he got his raise to $12.6 million. Lukeâ€s brother Quinn is a perennial Norris threat earning under $8 million after a six-year deal that he signed at age 20. Great job by the Canucks there. Their brother Jack has maybe the most team-friendly deal in the NHL, and when he signed his 8×8 contract people were apoplectic because he “hadnâ€t done anything yet.â€

What Jack Hughes had done was show that obviously he was going to be one of the leagueâ€s better offensive forces. And with the assumption that the salary cap would go up again eventually – we all knew it would in time – the Devils were correct that it wouldnâ€t take long for Hughes to be a massive bargain.

Jack has five more seasons at that $8 million mark, until 2030, and over that time, if he plays up to his potential, heâ€s probably worth $14 million a season. Heâ€s only 24 and already has a 99-point campaign. The bigger note, though, is that if he never got to the top of his potential, or even close, that deal is still fine! Theyâ€ve only paid him to be “pretty good,†at this point. These days $8 million is Pavel Buchnevich and Josh Norris money. Giving those years away for “security†is going to cost Jack tens of millions of dollars.

If you want to say “It doesnâ€t matter, heâ€s not going hungry,†then weâ€re not in the same conversation. The point is, all these “security†deals that teams are giving to young players are the smartest contract wins they can get. Itâ€s great for the teams, kudos, and so if they truly believe in their young talents, nowâ€s the time to take the big swing.

Seth Jarvis†long-term deal ($7.42 million) makes him a value buy. Brandon Hagelâ€s long-term deal ($6.5 million) makes him a value buy, and by “value†I mean like “50 per cent off.â€

The players now have real decisions to make, because “Which tier player am I in†is now the personal assessment for young guys.

The challenge for them is that the bottom half of rosters arenâ€t going to see their numbers go up like the top guys are. Even the middle class isnâ€t in for a massive jump in pay, though it should tick up some. So, are you more of a middle-of-the-pack guy, who should be begging to go long while youâ€re young, before they figure out youâ€re just OK? Do you need to sell those years because youâ€re not sure what youâ€ll be? Or are you a player whoâ€s so good that maybe it makes more sense to go shorter, so you can cash in as the cap rises?

Hereâ€s an important quote from a recent article in The Athletic, attributed to an anonymous player agent. I share it to note that locking in now for long term means you may also miss a bigger bump than expected:

Agent 3: â€œSometimes itâ€s just luck and circumstance. Kaprizov had all of the right leverage — a rising cap, a team that had a bunch of guys already signed. The other reality is the capâ€s set too low this year. I think youâ€re going to find that the cap is not just going to be at $104 (million) next year, and I think that $113.5 (million in 2026-27) is going to end up being like $120 (million). So the cap is going to go much higher, and sometimes itâ€s timing and situation, and I think thatâ€s what happened here.â€

There is value in being a 25-goal, 55-point guy, but if your game slips from there, suddenly youâ€re in the group of guys who donâ€t get paid. Maybe those are the ones who want to lock in for as long as they can in this cap environment. Niko Mikkola is a good, 29-year-old, second pair defenceman for Florida. He’s a physical, penalty-killing defenceman who had a career-high 22 points last season. He signed an eight-year deal with a $5 million AAV on Thursday, which he may not have been given under a flat cap. But in this environment it makes a lot of sense. A middle-of-the-lineup player gets long-term security, and the team locks in a reliable veteran at a very comfortable rate.

But if youâ€re a burgeoning star, or even an established one – particularly if youâ€re under 30 – I find it hard to believe that a max term contract makes sense. There are exceptions, like when a team wants to give you $136 million a la Kaprizov, of course.

The calculus has changed, and players need to be careful about giving up years of service if they believe they can be stars. Young guys need to be careful with the term they give away, because for those guys in this new salary cap world, the skyâ€s the limit.

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The Miami Heat and forward Nikola Jović agreed to terms on a four-year contract extension worth $62.4 million on Wednesday, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.

Jović is heading into his fourth season with Miami after the team selected him with the No. 27 overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft.

The Heat have just over $278.8 million in total cap allocations and $62.6 million in first-apron space for the 2026-27 season, the first year that Jović’s extension will kick in (via Spotrac).

The 22-year-old has shown encouraging signs when healthy, as he’s coming off a 2024-25 campaign in which he averaged a career-high 10.7 points to go along with 3.9 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game. He shot 45.6 percent from the field and 37.1 percent from three-point territory.

Jović also looked sharp while suiting up for Serbia during EuroBasket 2025. He recorded 12.8 points and 4.0 rebounds per game on 60.0/52.4/92.3 shooting splits during the tournament.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who traveled to Europe to watch the competition, was impressed with Jović.

“I’m really excited for Niko,” Spoelstra said, via Anthony Chiang of the Miami Herald. “I love it when he spends time with the national team. Every time he comes back to us, he comes back more mature. I think being around a group that knows how to win, that really cares about winning, the team is so connected also. So I think it makes a big impression on him. We’re looking forward to some great things ahead for him with us.”

Injuries have prevented Jović from making a larger impact in Miami’s rotation, as he’s appeared in just 107 of a possible 246 regular-season games to begin his career.

He was limited to just 15 games as a rookie due to back issues and only made 46 appearances last season after suffering a broken bone in his right hand on Feb. 23.

Still, the Heat are clearly excited about Jović’s long-term potential after making a financial commitment to him on Wednesday.

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Nearly a year ago, Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold declared that no team would be able to offer Kirill Kaprizov more money and was confident GM Bill Guerin would be able to retain the Russian’s services before his $9-million AAV contract expired in 2026. And in theory Leipold was right — since the Wild could offer one more year than any other team on a contract, and Minnesota did have the leverage to offer more total dollars than competitors in an open, free-agent market.

The question was: would he want to stay? The Wild have big plans for this core and have signed a few members of it to multi-year deals already. But Kaprizov was at the centre of it, the prized superstar who was a frontrunner for the Hart Trophy last year before a mid-season injury limited him to 41 games. Without Kaprizov, the Wild would have had to significantly recalculate their plans.

So it was more than a little nerve-wracking when Kaprizov turned down a $128-million contract earlier this pre-season, a total that already would have been the richest deal in NHL history. But the game is changing and contract values — especially for superstar players — are quickly going to become detached from benchmarks set over the past five or six years. While the upper limit of the salary cap rose $6.5 million from 2019-20 to 2024-25, it jumped $7.5 million from 2024-25 to 2025-26 and is projected to jump another $8.5 million by next season.

“That’s a lot of new money in the system that, frankly, a year or two ago we certainly had no idea was going to be available,” Leipold said last week. “So, it does change things, but we have to change with it.”

The expectation should be that superstars can push the limit more than ever, and the 2026 class of free agents will be the first to really put this to the test, with Connor McDavid, Kyle Connor, Jack Eichel, Artemi Panarin, and (previously) Kaprizov the headliners on expiring deals. None of them signed in the summer and it’s been a bit of a waiting game.

Finally on Tuesday, Kaprizov signed for $136 million over eight years, a $17-million AAV that sets the tone for what’s ahead and changes the outlook in a few ways:

• In total dollars it’s the most expensive contract in league history, even passing some of the deals signed before term limits were introduced. Since maximum-term lengths are being reduced from eight to seven years for re-signing players next year, we may not see this total passed right away. But with where the cap is going, it may only take an extra two or three years before someone gets $19.5 million and seven years.

• Kaprizov’s $17-million AAV surpasses the current league high, Leon Draisaitl’s $14 million. Draisaitl is only in the first season of that contract right now. That $3 million increase is the biggest single-season jump in a league-high AAV during the cap era.

• When Kaprizov’s extension kicks in next season, the salary cap is projected to be $104 million, meaning his $17-million AAV will account for 16.35 per cent of the cap. That also is a substantial market-setter, given the cap percentage of these other recent superstar deals that set a new bar in AAV when they were signed:

CAP % WHEN CONTRACT STARTS

In the aftermath of Kaprizov’s monster contract signing, we have two main takeaways to consider.

Guaranteed money vs. undervalued contracts

For a while now, it made a heck of a lot of sense for star players to lock in for the long-term and guarantee money. And, really, that may continue to be true given the injury risk that comes with playing hockey. But consider this: it took the salary cap 10 years (2013-14 to 2023-24) to increase by $19.2 million. Now, we’re looking at the prospect of the upper limit increasing from today’s $95.5 million to a projected $113.5 million in 2027-28 — an $18-million jump in just two years. It may climb even higher than that by 2027, and certainly will continue going up beyond that season.

Will more players choose to do what Auston Matthews has done early in his career? The Maple Leafs captain signed separate four- and five-year deals in his prime that made him the second-highest and highest paid player at the time, and he’s still on track to earn one of the league’s most lucrative deals when his current contract expires in 2028 and he’s 30 years old.

Take a look at these recent long-term deals and how valuable they will begin to look as soon as next season. This shows what the percentage of the cap each deal will be next season, and what AAV that would equal relative to this season’s salary cap:

This shows a wide swath of star players — some who could push the upper limit, and others who wouldn’t. But each is a leading player in their NHL organizations and as those contracts age well beyond 2026-27, they’ll likely become more and more valuable as wages spike.

The other consideration: How will players in the middle of long-term deals feel making millions less than the comparable player across from them who just recently re-upped?

Will a player push for maximum percentage in this era?

Even with revenue sharing what it is, we have to wonder how high the salary cap needs to go before we start creeping back towards an era where certain teams can always spend to the cap, and others either have to pick their spots, or work within their own internal caps. It wasn’t unusual in recent years to see nearly half the league utilizing LTIR to stay under the cap, where today roughly half the league is beginning the season with at least $4.5 million in cap space. Teams already have more breathing room — what will that look like when the upper limit gets to $113.5 million? $120 million? Or more?

Time will tell the trickle-down effect a rising cap will have on mid-lineup and depth players, but superstars should have more room to maximize earnings. The most a player can make is 20 per cent of the cap, which no one has done since the very early days of this system when Brad Richards got that while the upper limit was $39 million.

Since Kaprizov set a new, recent benchmark for cap percentage as well, we have to wonder if someone else will push past that in the next few years.

Next season, Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar, both generation-defining defencemen in their primes, will set the market for their position. Nikita Kucherov will be in his early-30s, but also an interesting pending UFA. Macklin Celebrini and Ivan Demidov will be RFAs coming off their entry-level contracts with the potential to chase big dollars by then.

In 2028, Matthews will be up. So will Brady Tkachuk, who would be appealing to any team, and Zach Werenski could be looking for one last big payday on the heels of the previous season’s defencemen. If McDavid re-signs for short term in Edmonton this time around, what if he tests the market three years down the road?

And who knows which other players will emerge as stars by then.

How many of these players will end up with a higher AAV than Kaprizov’s brand new deal?

This new era is just getting started.

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CHICAGO — When it comes to his plans for the Chicago Blackhawks, general manager Kyle Davidson is focused on the growth and maturation of the organization’s top prospects. That group includes a total of 11 first-round picks since the 2022 draft.

Such is life these days for the NHL’s rebuilding teams, looking to chart a course back to the playoffs in a league with a rising salary cap. Financial flexibility — when it comes to free agency, or using cap space to facilitate a trade — isn’t what it used to be, putting an even bigger emphasis on player development.

“(Free agency) is something thatâ€s definitely a tool in our toolbox in roster building,†Davidson said. “But I think the main one has to be and will be growing from within and building from within.â€

The salary cap for this season is $95.5 million, up from $88 million. It goes up to $104 million for the 2026-27 season and $113.5 million in â€27-28. Making the most of the NHL’s healthy financial outlook, many of the league’s top teams retained their best players this summer.

Mitch Marner went from Toronto to Las Vegas in a sign-and-trade deal before free agency started, and Nikolaj Ehlers waited until July 3 before agreeing to a $51 million, six-year contract with Carolina. But depth pieces made up most of the free agent market.

Kirill Kaprizov agreed to a $136 million, eight-year contract with Minnesota that was announced on Tuesday. The 28-year-old Kaprizov could have hit free agency after this season, but the talented forward stayed with the Wild for a record-setting deal.

“You saw it this summer,†Columbus general manager Don Waddell said. “Summers before youâ€d always have seven, eight, nine teams that had to move money to get under the cap. You didnâ€t see that this summer. … I think going forward youâ€re going to see less free agency. Youâ€re going to see teams locking up their own players if they can.â€

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A diminished level of free agency puts the NHL’s non-playoff teams in the same boat, facing even more pressure to grow their own stars.

“Ultimately, for teams in our situation, I think you need those young players coming in to build that core,” Detroit general manager Steve Yzerman said.

Developing those young players goes beyond the organization, stretching to its draft picks on college, junior and international club teams. Anton Frondell, an 18-year-old forward who was selected by Chicago with the No. 2 overall pick in this year’s draft, is staying in Sweden this season, and Vaclav Nestrasil, another first-rounder for the Blackhawks, is playing for the University of Massachusetts.

When it comes to their prospects in other programs, NHL teams stay in close contact with their players and the coaching staffs on their teams. It doesn’t sound as if Davidson and the Blackhawks have any plans to alter their approach even with their development focus.

“We let the player, weâ€re an input into their decision-making process, and then we let them go,†Davidson said. “And then once theyâ€re in an environment, in a program, we try and work with and alongside the coaching staff, because what we donâ€t want is our player to be put in the crosshairs or at an intersection of our direction and the coaching staff direction with where theyâ€re at, and then the player has just got a million things in their head.”

Technology has become a major part of player development across the NHL. The Blackhawks use an internal app to share video, tips and other information with their current players and the prospects in their system. Davidson described the Blackhawks as “actively investigating†how it can use artificial intelligence within the organization.

“Weâ€re working on that,” Waddell said. “Weâ€ve actually brought it in this year to our prospects and add some AI tests and so forth to find out. But I donâ€t think itâ€s any secret. Other teams are doing it, too. But I think with AI coming and with your analytics department … the two could be tied together where it may help in certain areas.”

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