NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said that the skyrocketing prices of elite talent around the league as the salary cap soars isn’t of concern to the owners.
“I think people are a little not fully understanding what’s happening with the cap,” Bettman said during the first intermission of the Panthers-Blackhawks opener. “Because the cap is in part growing the way it is because we’re still catching up from the flat-cap era. It’s going back to the level over the next couple of years where it’s supposed to be. The system works well, revenues are at an all-time high. We recaptured in, really, record time the Covid money that had been advanced. So from an economic standpoint, things are all good. Never better.”
As for Connor McDavid taking a significant discount on his two-year extension in Edmonton, Bettman said, “It tells you what a player’s prepared to do in terms of committing himself to his team and his community.”