The cap is going up next year, that much is guaranteed. But the rumored increases beyond that were not set in stone, and are almost certainly not going to be as high as originally forecasted. Personally, I don’t want to find the Leafs in a cap-strapped situation like they were during the flat cap Covid era.

Not going to be anywhere near that era. It’ll stay up where they expect it.

And even if it doesn’t, there will be at least a dozen teams maxed out regardless. It’ll be a league problem, not a Leafs problem.

The only way they would ever be able to protect themselves against that situation in the future is to get the players to agree on % based contracts that go up or down depending on revenue.

For example, if a player is making 10% a year on a 100 million max cap, he makes 10 million. If the cap goes up to 110 million, he makes 11 million. If it goes down to 90, he makes 9 million. It would significantly change which players get the max 8 years.