New York Islanders: 2018-2019 Cap Expected To Be Between $79.5 and $80 million

Gary Bettman said today that the cap is expected to go up to $79.5-$80 million for next year. This is huge for the New York Islanders.

Ever since we found out the cap was supposed to increase to $78 million-$82 million, New York Islanders fans have been

patiently

anxiously waiting for the official number so we can get this offseason cooking for real.

Well, today we found out the cap is expected to be between $79.5-$80 million courtesy of Gary Bettman the NHL Commissioner.

The reason this is so important for the Islanders is because they have a very important free agent to re-sign. John Tavares, as we all know, is coming off the final year of a deal that gave him a $5.5 million cap number.

That number is going to likely at least double in the coming days, so it’s important to see how much room the Islanders would be working with. Essentially, the Islanders get the middle of the road with $80 million which was a fair guesstimation all season long.

For argument sake let’s use the $11 million dollars as the benchmark. That would be the highest cap number by five million dollars. If the cap increases by $5 million and Tavares’ new cap number increases by $5.5 million, the Islanders are still in solid shape.

That’s only a $500,000 increase to what the Islanders are used to, when you consider the old cap, and the Islanders also have Jaroslav Halak’s and Nikolay Kulemin’s combined $8.7 million coming off the books as well.

This proves that they’ll be able to afford to keep Tavares, while also having room to extend Ryan Pulock and adding a defenseman and goalie to the mix as well.

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One website kindly wrote out a theory on why Tavares was waiting for the cap number to come out before he signed a deal. The cap number being around $80 million only helps the Islanders chances of retaining John Tavares. This is a good thing.