NHL teams have a whole lot of money to spend in free agency with the salary cap getting the biggest increase in its existence, and a bunch of players will cash in when the clock strikes noon on Tuesday.
The cap is jumping $7.5 million from $88 million to $95.5 million, with that number set to exceed $100 million a year from now. Already back-to-back Stanley Cup-champion Florida re-signed playoff MVP Sam Bennett, and 100-point scorer Mitch Marner also could be locked up long term before hitting the market.
That sets the stage for an unpredictable free agent period, with a lack of franchise-changing talent available but plenty of competition around the league, from rivals challenging the Panthers' crown and teams trying to just make the playoffs to those looking to make the leap sometime in the coming years.
“I think it’ll be busy,” San Jose general manager Mike Grier said. “You have some teams that are coming out of their rebuild. You got some teams that want to take the next step as far as playoffs-wise, stuff like that. And you have maybe a situation where it’s not the strongest free agent class. So, I think you have to kind of combine all these things with the cap going up.”
Marner would be the headliner, leaving Toronto for a change of scenery after nearly a decade of regular season success mixed with playoff futility. He's coming off setting career highs with 75 assists and 102 points but also has just 13 goals to show for 70 career postseason games, and the Vegas Golden Knights could acquire the 28-year-old's rights from the Maple Leafs and sign him before anyone else gets the chance.
Beyond him, Mikael Granlund was the highest-producing player in 2024-25 with 66 points, and Nikolaj Ehlers averaged 0.91 game. Florida could re-sign Brad Marchand and/or Aaron Ekblad to aid in the three-peat bid, with one of them possibly departing, and Detroit GM Steve Yzerman still hopes to bring back Patrick Kane.
Ehlers, fellow winger Brock Boeser and defensemen Vladislav Gavrikov and Ivan Provorov could be among the highest earners in a free agent class that was weakened by so many stars re-upping ahead of time.
“Anybody can go look at the list of potential free agents and see there aren’t that many and players that you would think will have an impact,” Yzerman said Saturday. “There are very few this year, for whatever reason.”
Do not figure Tampa Bay, with all its core players under contract, will be involved.
“I do expect us to be quiet,” two-time Cup-winning Lightning GM Julien BriseBois said. “I want to manage expectations. I don’t expect anything from us — certainly nothing major.”
Same for the Panthers, who have to fill out some spots but have already built a consistent winner around Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart. Tons of teams in the Eastern Conference are trying to chase them down, while the West is wide open from Dallas and Colorado to two-time defending conference champion Edmonton looking to improve.
Grier's Sharks, the Anaheim Ducks and Columbus Blue Jackets have the most cap space available. Blue Jackets GM Don Waddell said he and his counterparts are well aware of the cap going up, joking that just about every agent he talks to brings it up.
“There’s more money in the market, obviously, this year with the cap going up like it is, and it’s going to continue over the next multiple years the way the cap is structured right now,” Waddell said.
It looked like Utah would be a major factor, and then the Mammoth made their big splash trading for and signing young, high-scoring winger JJ Peterka from Buffalo. They're trying to make the playoffs in their second season in Salt Lake City without hurting the long-term future prospects of competing for a championship.
“We do have to be smart about it," GM Bill Armstrong said. “You see those teams last year that they won the summer. They crushed it. They didn’t win the winter.”
Connor McDavid, the undisputed best hockey player on the planet, is eligible to sign an extension with the Oilers this summer. What he makes could set the bar for the rest of the league.
Until that happens, it's anyone's guess what the prices will be at various roles and ages.
“It feels like you call an agent, he tells you, ‘This is where we’re at,’ and so, OK. That’s the number," Washington GM Chris Patrick said with a chuckle. “I think we all have to maybe change our gauge on what a second-liner used to make in the old cap. Now it’s going to be a different number.”
Revenues rising and pushing the cap to new heights is a brave, new world for the NHL after only marginal increases since the pandemic. The league and union agreed to extend the collective bargaining agreement, international play is back on a regular basis and labor peace expected through 2030 has everyone around the sport feeling good.
Those in charge of spending to build rosters are trying hard to be careful and not get caught up in the free agent frenzy.
"Every time the cap goes up, sometimes you get antsy because I really want the players, but you have to stay true to your process and knowing what value you attribute to and what cap number you attribute every player and stick to your way because a decision that was good today could hurt you down the road,” New York Islanders GM Mathieu Darche said.
“You have to be smart and diligent in the signings. But of course it will be exciting. Players are excited the cap is going up. Trust me, agents are excited right now. But you still have to be disciplined in what you do.”
AP Hockey Writer John Wawrow contributed to this report.
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl
FILE - Toronto Maple Leafs right wing Mitch Marner (16) shoots past Anaheim Ducks defenseman Pavel Mintyukov (34) during the second period of an NHL hockey game, March 30, 2025, in Anaheim, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong, file)
Florida Panthers Brad Marchand celebrates with fans during the NHL hockey team's Stanley Cup championship celebration, Sunday, June 22, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla (AP Photo/Michael Laughlin)
FILE - Vancouver Canucks' Brock Boeser, right, celebrates after scoring past St. Louis Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington, left, during the third period of an NHL hockey game, March 20, 2025, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, file)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
