NHL Salary Cap 2027-28: A $113.5M Ceiling and the $22.7M Auston Matthews Question

The NHL salary cap for 2027-28 is projected at $113.5 million

The NHL salary cap 2027-28 projection is $113.5 million, a $9.5-million jump from the $104-million ceiling that governs the coming season, with a lower limit projected at $83.9 million. The league and the NHLPA published payroll ranges covering the next three seasons, and while the figures carry the usual caveat that they are subject to minor adjustment, they are the numbers every front office is now planning against.

For the Toronto Maple Leafs, one consequence matters more than the rest. A player's maximum salary in any single season is capped at 20 per cent of the upper limit in the year his contract is signed. At $113.5 million, that ceiling becomes $22.7 million. And Auston Matthews becomes eligible to sign an extension on July 1, 2027 — inside that league year.

Where the numbers actually sit

Start with what is already locked. The 2026-27 upper limit is $104 million, up $8.5 million, with a $76.9-million floor and a $90.4-million midpoint. The maximum individual salary this season is $20.8 million, the first time in the cap era any player could legally be paid more than $20 million in a single year.

Then 2027-28 arrives at a projected $113.5 million. In two seasons the cap will have moved roughly $18 million. That is not a normal escalation curve; it is the league catching up after years of flat caps tied to pandemic-era escrow debt, and it is why every contract signed before 2025 now looks like a bargain.

Matthews is on the tail end of exactly one of those. He signed a four-year, $53-million extension in August 2023 carrying a $13.25-million cap hit, which at the time made him the highest-paid player in the league by average annual value. That deal runs through 2027-28. Against this season's $104-million ceiling it eats 12.7 per cent of the cap. Against a $113.5-million ceiling in 2027-28, it drops to 11.7 per cent — for a player who, when healthy, is one of the two or three best goal-scorers alive.

Why July 1, 2027 is the date circled in the building

Matthews cannot sign an extension until July 1, 2027. That date falls inside the 2027-28 league year, which means the projected $113.5-million upper limit — and the $22.7-million individual maximum that flows from it — is the framework his next contract would be negotiated under.

Nobody is suggesting Matthews signs for $22.7 million. The point of a ceiling is that it establishes the outer edge of the room. What matters is where inside that room the conversation starts, and the market has moved that starting point hard in the past two months.

Macklin Celebrini's five-year, $94-million extension carries an $18.8-million cap hit, the highest AAV in league history. Connor Bedard reset the tier below it. There is now a serious public argument being made that Connor McDavid should become the league's first $20-million player. Matthew Schaefer, the reigning Calder winner, is not extension-eligible until July 1, 2027 either, and the projections around him already start with a two in front.

Matthews will be 29 in the summer of 2027 and will have spent a decade as the face of the franchise. He is not going to be the player who accepts a discount to the top of the market. He is also not going to be the player who resets it — that ship sailed to San Jose.

The seven-year problem

Here is the complication that did not exist the last time Toronto did this. The new collective bargaining agreement takes effect on September 16, 2026, and it cuts the maximum re-signing term from eight years to seven. It also caps total signing bonuses at 60 per cent of a contract's value and bans deferred salary outright.

Toronto has historically used bonus-heavy structures aggressively — Matthews' current deal and William Nylander's are both built that way, with Nylander's 2026-27 compensation consisting of a $1-million base salary and an $11.5-million signing bonus. That tool still exists, but it is now bounded.

The shorter term matters more. Seven years instead of eight removes one year of cap-hit averaging, which mechanically pushes the AAV up on any given total value. A player seeking $140 million gets $20 million a year over seven, not $17.5 million over eight. Every team negotiating a max-adjacent contract from here is going to feel that.

We broke down the term change in detail in our look at the CBA's seven-year limit and what it does to Matthews' next deal, and the bonus mechanics in the new 60 per cent signing bonus rule.

What Toronto's 2027-28 books actually look like

The reason the rising cap is not simply good news for the Leafs is that their three most important forward contracts are already long-term commitments, and two of them run well past 2027-28.

• Nylander: eight years, $92 million, $11.5-million cap hit, signed through 2031-32.
• Matthew Knies: six years, $46.5 million, $7.75-million cap hit.
• Matthews: $13.25 million through 2027-28, then unrestricted territory.

Against a projected $113.5-million cap in 2027-28, that trio consumes $32.5 million, or about 28.6 per cent of the ceiling. Replace Matthews' $13.25 million with a hypothetical $20 million and the same three players cost $39.25 million — roughly 34.6 per cent. That is before a single defenceman, goaltender or bottom-six forward is paid.

It is also before Gavin McKenna's entry-level contract expires. McKenna signed his three-year deal after being drafted first overall, which means his second contract negotiation lands in the same general window. If he becomes what Toronto drafted him to be, that is a second max-adjacent conversation arriving right behind the first. We looked at how his entry-level deal functions as a cap weapon in the short term — the flip side is what happens when it ends.

The case for paying it anyway

Here is the counterargument, and it is stronger than the doom framing suggests. Cap percentage, not raw dollars, is the only honest way to evaluate a contract, and the percentages are moving in Toronto's favour on every deal it has already signed.

Nylander at $11.5 million was 13.1 per cent of the cap when he signed it in January 2024. In 2027-28 it will be 10.1 per cent. Knies at $7.75 million will be 6.8 per cent — genuinely cheap for a top-six power forward if he holds his form. Every year the cap climbs, those two deals get better without anyone doing anything.

A Matthews extension at, say, 17 or 18 per cent of the cap would be expensive in dollars and roughly in line with what elite number-one centres have always cost as a share of the ceiling. The organizations that get burned are the ones paying a rising percentage for declining production, not the ones paying market rate for a player who is still the best forward on the roster.

The real risk in Toronto's case is not the price. It is health. Matthews played 60 games last season and posted a career-low 53 points after a Grade 3 MCL tear. A seven-year deal signed at 29 covers his age-29 through age-35 seasons. The back half of that contract is where the argument gets uncomfortable, and it is the specific reason the front office has spent this summer rebuilding everything around him — including a new sport performance department.

What's next

Nothing formal happens on this file for eleven months. The 2027-28 figure is a projection, not a ratified number, and it will be finalized closer to the date. What changes between now and July 2027 is the market around Matthews: whether McDavid signs first and at what number, whether Schaefer's extension lands where the projections say, and — most importantly — whether Matthews plays 80-plus games this season and looks like himself again.

A healthy 50-goal season makes this a negotiation about how much. A second injury-shortened year makes it a negotiation about something else entirely. Follow the cap picture on our contracts page and the season as it unfolds in the standings.