When the Carolina Hurricanes raised the Stanley Cup last week, they continued a trend as old as the NHL salary cap: no NHL team in the salary cap era has won the Stanley Cup and had a player carry a cap hit over $10MM. This stat is surprising given how many high-end players now carry AAVs well over $10MM, but it also shows that the teams that have won in this era have done so with balance and depth rather than relying on stars to carry them to victory and creating a top-heavy salary cap structure. Now, $10MM might seem like an arbitrary number to use for this piece, but the fact of the matter is that no team has been able to get over the hump with a player on their roster making north of that dollar figure.
Now, this is not to say that highly paid superstars haven’t won the cup. Of course, they have. But generally, those who have done so have signed below-market contracts to keep the team competitive. A good example is the Pittsburgh Penguins, who won three Stanley Cups with Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby earning big money, yet neither player has ever had a cap hit above $9.5MM. Even back in 2009 when Sidney Crosby’s $8.7MM cap hit took up a bigger portion of the Penguins payroll (15.3% of the $56.7MM salary cap limit) Pittsburgh was still able to field a competitive roster despite allocating a big percentage to Crosby as they benefitted from a third line of Tyler Kennedy, Jordan Staal and Matt Cooke making less than $4MM combined which goes to show that often the depth of a team is the thing that will give them an edge. It is interesting to note that Pittsburgh was able to weather that contract and win the Stanley Cup despite it taking up a bigger percentage of the salary cap than $10MM+ would today. Which makes the $10MM+ even more arbitrary, but interesting.
Looking at the last few years, many elite-player contracts have settled in the $11MM-$13MM range, which is probably below market value for some. Despite earning less than they could conceivably get, those players have not been able to carry their teams to victory while earning over $10MM. There have been teams with players making exactly $10MM (for example, the Florida Panthers last season, with Sergei Bobrovsky and Aleksander Barkov), but in general, winning teams have consistently avoided the ultra-expensive contracts that weigh down their roster depth.
What Carolina showed this year, and what the Florida Panthers did in previous seasons when they won the cup, is that teams that can spread their payroll across different tiers are much more successful than those handing out hockey’s version of a supermax deal. That salary-cap efficiency allows for depth throughout the roster, which ultimately gives a team the ability to lay the groundwork for playoff success.
It should also be noted that the Florida Panthers won the 2025 Stanley Cup with two players carrying a cap hit of exactly $10MM, which is interesting given the depth of that roster. Despite carrying those two eight-figure cap hits, Florida was able to fill out their roster with solid depth players and roll all four lines throughout the playoffs. They also benefitted from some absolute bargain contracts, including those of Sam Bennett, Carter Verhaeghe, Evan Rodrigues, Niko Mikkola and youngster Mackie Samoskevich. In the case of the Panthers, they were an organization that had all the pieces fit at the right time during a two-year window, similar to what happened with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020 and 2021, as well as the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017.
What those three teams had in common was that they structured their salary cap to fill out their rosters, plan for injuries in the playoffs, adjust to matchup changes if necessary, and give themselves depth should some of their players become fatigued later in the postseason. The Penguins were a good example of this in 2017, when they used their salary cap flexibility to cover Kris Letang’s playoff absence by acquiring multiple veteran defensemen at the NHL Trade Deadline, including Ron Hainsey, who effectively replaced Letang on the top pairing. The Penguins had roughly 10 NHL defensemen on their roster come playoff time and ended up using eight of them on their way to the Stanley Cup.
The Penguins, like the other recent cup winners, had elite players, but a common trait among these teams is that their franchise stars carry discounted cap hits for various reasons. It could be by choice, as is the case with the Penguins, or it could be an advantageous tax situation, as it was in Florida and Tampa Bay, or it could be smart timing by the team to lock in players long term prior to a breakout. Whatever it is, they all avoided breaking the bank for their stars, which isn’t true for all teams and their franchise stars, just ask the Toronto Maple Leafs.
As was demonstrated with the Panthers, big cap hits do exist on championship teams, and it appears that a player will soon make over $10MM and become a champion, especially with the salary cap climbing. Barring unforeseen circumstances, $10MM should be a lot more common in a couple of years, and much less of a roster constraint. But that’s always been one of the main purposes of a salary cap world: spread-the-wealth around the league. Eventually, bigger cap hits will begin to win Stanley Cups, and $10MM will become a regular cap hit for a second-line winger or a second-pairing defenseman. Until then, it will be fascinating to watch how many more seasons the trend can continue.
