Philadelphia Flyers’ Cap Questions Slowly Being Answered

The NHL salary cap for the upcoming season was finalized at $73 million, answering one more question for the Philadelphia Flyers’ planning

One more piece of the Philadelphia Flyers salary cap puzzled was answered yesterday, as the NHL finalized next season’s salary cap at $73 million. This is only a minor increase from last season’s $71.4 million cap. Indeed, revenues were flat, but options to utilize “growth factors” led to a minor rise.

With this news, the Flyers are inching towards answering their salary cap questions for this season. In the last week or so, RJ Umberger was officially bought out, and Vincent Lecavalier announced his retirement.

Plugging these decisions into the Flyers salary cap, the Flyers have just under $17 million in cap space. That sounds like a lot, but much of it will be quickly eaten up when Brayden Schenn, Radko Gudas, Ryan White, Brandon Manning and Nick Cousins sign new deals. Furthermore, the team may need to leave a little bit of space to add Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny to the roster.

Obviously there are many more questions for the Flyers to answer in regards to their salary planning, but it is unlikely they will have much flexibility to talk to free agents. Perhaps they will still attempt to move Mark Streit to open salary cap space, but it is likely that even in such a deal the Flyers would retain part of his salary.

Bottom line, the Philadelphia Flyers are not in “cap hell” like so many NHL teams and being forced to make depressing trades, but nor do they have freedom to add players as they please. Stay tuned.