Different Cap Amounts for each team

avsfan96 · 11-01-2019, 01:20 PM

When I started my new season 2022-2023 I set the cap limit amount to 79 million. I have played half the season and when I flip through each team the cap limit is different for each and every team ranging from 81 million to 96 million. I looked under NHL>Rules and the Cap limit is indeed 79 million. Why is there different Cap limits for each teams and why is it not at 79 million? Doesn't seem to be an even playing field if each teams cap limit is different.

JeffR · 11-01-2019, 02:16 PM

Cap Space remaining is always expressed in terms of full-season cap hit you can add. So, if you've been under the cap all year, the amount you have to spend will grow as the season goes along. The alternative would be to start tracking things like accumulated cap hit for each player and show potential acquisitions in terms of cap hit for the remainder of the season. Mathematically, it gets you the exact same result, but it's a lot less intuitive to grasp when you're looking at the numbers, because your frame of reference for the cap hit values has to keep shifting throughout the season. When you're 50 games into the season, it's a lot easier to remember that "$5 million is a lot of cap hit" rather than "$1,951,219.51 million is a lot of cap hit when you have 32 games left to play."

avsfan96 · 11-03-2019, 11:42 AM

I have been looking around and can't find anything about accumulating cap space during the regular season. Everything I've have read indicates the Salary Cap is a hard number for the entire season. Am I just not seeing what you explained about how the Salary Cap works in FHM6 or does the game just track it differently than in the actual NHL?

JeffR · 11-03-2019, 01:57 PM

The cap itself is not changing. It's still $81.5 million for the entire season. What's shown in the game is the effective full-season cap for each team, which will increase as the season goes on for the teams that are under the cap. If a team is at the halfway point of the season and has maintained a cap hit of $78 million the whole time, they've only spent $39m of the $81.5m they're allowed for the year. So there's $42.5m remaining to them for the second half of the season. If they were to spend it all on one player, they could acquire one with a $7m full-season cap hit - he'll only be there for half a season, so that's $3.5m, exactly the amount they have to spare. They couldn't have acquired the same player at the start of the year, because he would've put them over the limit at that point, but after spending half the year under the cap, they can afford him.

If you're looking at CapFriendly.com, the number we display is the equivalent of adding their "Current Cap Space" value (which is expressed in full-season cap hit values) to the $81.5m cap.

11-01-2019, 01:20 PM	#1
avsfan96 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jun 2019 Posts: 38	Different Cap Amounts for each team When I started my new season 2022-2023 I set the cap limit amount to 79 million. I have played half the season and when I flip through each team the cap limit is different for each and every team ranging from 81 million to 96 million. I looked under NHL>Rules and the Cap limit is indeed 79 million. Why is there different Cap limits for each teams and why is it not at 79 million? Doesn't seem to be an even playing field if each teams cap limit is different.

11-01-2019, 02:16 PM	#2
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 16,623	Cap Space remaining is always expressed in terms of full-season cap hit you can add. So, if you've been under the cap all year, the amount you have to spend will grow as the season goes along. The alternative would be to start tracking things like accumulated cap hit for each player and show potential acquisitions in terms of cap hit for the remainder of the season. Mathematically, it gets you the exact same result, but it's a lot less intuitive to grasp when you're looking at the numbers, because your frame of reference for the cap hit values has to keep shifting throughout the season. When you're 50 games into the season, it's a lot easier to remember that "$5 million is a lot of cap hit" rather than "$1,951,219.51 million is a lot of cap hit when you have 32 games left to play."

11-03-2019, 11:42 AM	#3
avsfan96 Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Jun 2019 Posts: 38	I have been looking around and can't find anything about accumulating cap space during the regular season. Everything I've have read indicates the Salary Cap is a hard number for the entire season. Am I just not seeing what you explained about how the Salary Cap works in FHM6 or does the game just track it differently than in the actual NHL?

11-03-2019, 01:57 PM	#4
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 16,623	The cap itself is not changing. It's still $81.5 million for the entire season. What's shown in the game is the effective full-season cap for each team, which will increase as the season goes on for the teams that are under the cap. If a team is at the halfway point of the season and has maintained a cap hit of $78 million the whole time, they've only spent $39m of the $81.5m they're allowed for the year. So there's $42.5m remaining to them for the second half of the season. If they were to spend it all on one player, they could acquire one with a $7m full-season cap hit - he'll only be there for half a season, so that's $3.5m, exactly the amount they have to spare. They couldn't have acquired the same player at the start of the year, because he would've put them over the limit at that point, but after spending half the year under the cap, they can afford him. If you're looking at CapFriendly.com, the number we display is the equivalent of adding their "Current Cap Space" value (which is expressed in full-season cap hit values) to the $81.5m cap.