2009-2010 Cap: $54 Million-$56.7 Million

During Bettman’s most recent comments about how this Stanley Cup Finals taught a lesson about troubled teams, Gary Bettman released some solid numbers to go with for next season’s salary cap ceiling.

Despite the current economic downturn, Bettman said the NHL experienced four per cent real revenue growth over the last year. He indicated that next season’s salary cap will end up somewhere between US$54 million and its current spot at $56.7 million.

Q: But Dave, everyone knew the cap was going down, why bother posting this?
A: Because before this article, we only had a wide range of rumors of what the cap could be. Those rumors had the cap anywhere from $51 million to $60 million. The numbers above are straight from the mouth of the commissioner himself.

Now that the question above is out of the way, what does this mean for the Rangers? Well, simply put, they need to do some savvy cap maneuvering to stay under, especially if it drops to $54 million. How will Glen Sather manage this? I wish I knew. I still don’t know how he gets from Point A to Point B in his thought process. This will be an interesting offseason.