from James A. Conley of Shnarped,

With the currencies trading places, the latest release from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman projects the cap will land at around $70 million, or less.

“Well we’ve said, and these are rough, rough projections because we don’t have enough data yet, the guesstimate was around $71 million. With the Canadian dollar down, maybe it could be 69 or 70, in that range.

“But those are just rough estimates, nothing more than that at this point.”

The cap still has yet to be officially set for the upcoming season, but any ceiling below $70 million is going to be a bit of a shock to some clubs. Consider the following.

• As of today, four clubs — the Blackhawks, Flyers, Bruins and Canucks — would start next season within $10 million of a $69 million salary cap, and six others would be within $15 million of that ceiling, all without having yet fielded a complete 23-man NHL roster.
• This year’s salary cap is set at $64.3 million, an agreed upon number that was set as a condition of resolving the 2012 NHL Lockout. That number is identical to the 2011 salary cap ceiling. The 2013 salary cap, which was based on projections not yet interrupted by the last lockout, stood at $70.2 million. Anything less than that would represent a relative slowdown in the growth of league revenues and, subsequently, the cap ceiling.
• Given the new 8-year limit on free agent contract extensions (and 7-year limits on players signing with new clubs), there is less term over which teams can spread the AAV (annual average value) of a player’s contract. The difference is made up in higher AAV’s than were seen prior to the 2013 Collective Bargaining Agreement.

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