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The Stanley Cup Final run of the expansion Golden Knights contributed to what is expected to be a healthy increase for the salary cap, giving NHL teams more freedom to make deals. With elite center John Tavares, top defenseman John Carlson and a strong group of free agents available soon, the ceiling for player spending will rise to between $78 and $82 million from $75 million.

”The higher the better,” said Brian MacLellan, whose Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup. ”It makes it a lot more fun.”

Gentlemen, open your wallets – players like Tavares, Carlson and forwards James van Riemsdyk and Paul Stastny won’t come cheap.

With GMs meeting Thursday in Dallas ahead of this weekend’s draft, trade talk is percolating before free agency opens July 1. Ottawa has already traded winger Mike Hoffman, and Buffalo center Ryan O’Reilly, Pittsburgh forward Phil Kessel, Montreal captain Max Pacioretty and Washington backup goaltender Philipp Grubauer could all be on the move.

Ottawa captain Erik Karlsson is the star who will go to the highest bidder if the Senators are willing to trade the Norris Trophy-winning defenseman with one year remaining on his contract. GM Pierre Dorion seemed to be in a tough spot after it was revealed last week that Karlsson’s wife had filed an order of protection against Hoffman’s girlfriend, Monika Caryk, alleging harassment and bullying. He solved that issue by acquiring Mikkel Boedker from the San Jose Sharks for Hoffman in the first major trade of the offseason.

San Jose flipped Hoffman to Florida soon thereafter Mark Sanchez Jersey , freeing up salary-cap space to pursue Tavares or Russian standout Ilya Kovalchuk. The Panthers got a 20-goal scorer in Hoffman, who’s just 28.

More immediate decisions await the Islanders and Capitals. New York could make a move to re-sign Tavares before he can begin speaking with other teams on Monday, and recently hired president of hockey operations Lou Lamoriello has to hire a new coach.

The Islanders might’ve gotten a fortunate bounce when Barry Trotz resigned from his job with Washington less than two weeks after lifting the Cup. Re-signing Tavares and hiring a replacement for fired coach Doug Weight go hand-in-hand.

If it doesn’t work out and Tavares hits the open market, a contract with an annual salary approaching Connor McDavid’s $12.5 million isn’t out of the question. Nashville GM David Poile said cap situations put five or six teams in position for top-end free agents – and knock about half the league out of the running.

”We all have different commitments already of contracts,” Poile said. ”Some teams have a lot of room. Some teams don’t have very much room.”

Big-revenue teams with money to spend include the retooling New York Rangers and the rising Toronto Maple Leafs. The Rangers are among several teams linked to Kovalchuk, the 35-year-old winger who’s looking to return to the NHL after five seasons in the Kontinental Hockey League.

Former Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov, who won an Olympic gold medal with Kovalchuk, is back in the U.S. and could be on the way to returning. Voynov was convicted of domestic abuse and is suspended indefinitely by the NHL, which makes it unclear how a team will pave the way for him to play.

”Right now he’s a suspended player, and until anything changes there, I don’t think we’re in a position to comment any further,” Kings GM Rob Blake said. ”A lot of this has to take place between him, his agent and the National Hockey League.”

Dozens of current free agents don’t know where they’ll be playing next season. Beyond Tavares, Carlson is the most in-demand pending free agent after leading all defensemen in regular-season and playoff points.

Carlson plans to have his day with the Stanley Cup in Washington Abry Jones Jersey , but because of the uncertainty of the offseason, there’s no guarantee he’ll be there this fall.

”We’ll see what happens,” Carlson said. ”I love it here and all that, I want to stay here, but there’s more to it than that.”

—


They've been taking action for two weeks now in New Jersey, where basketball great Julius Erving helped kick things off with a $5 bet on the Philadelphia Eagles to repeat as Super Bowl champions.

Sports betting is here, and it's not going anywhere soon. States are embracing their newly won right to offer wagers, and fans are responding by lining up at the betting windows to throw a few bucks on their favorite teams.

And, surprisingly enough to some, the major sports leagues have 鈥?so far at least 鈥?somehow managed to survive.

No one has tried to fix anything, as the NFL for years claimed would happen if sports betting was legalized. No one has cried foul over some shenanigans going on in a game.

And, best of all, no greedy sports league has managed to dip its fingers into the pie.

That may change if New York eventually passes a sports betting bill that didn't make the cut with legislators this year. Proposed legislation there calls for a 0.2 percent cut of betting revenue for the sports leagues, which claim they need it to pay for extra expenses associated with legal sports betting.

It's a bad idea Logan Woodside Jersey , nothing more than a money grab by leagues that for years decried sports betting as immoral and a threat to their games 鈥?until they figured out there might be some money to be made on it.

But if the anecdotal evidence of two weeks of legal betting in a few states is any indication, there's a ton of money to be made.

A report released Wednesday by GamblingCompliance, a Washington-based research firm, predicted sports betting will be legal in 25 to 37 states within five years. Billions of dollars will be wagered, with gross gaming win expected to top $5 billion by 2023 alone.

That translates into total wagering of some $100 billion a year alone, a staggering figure 20 times what was bet legally in Nevada last year.

Bookies will get their cut, and so will the states taxing the winnings. The report predicts New Jersey and Pennsylvania will surpass Nevada in sports betting revenue within five years, with just over $300 million in win each, and New York will likely end up being the biggest sports betting market in the nation once legislation is passed there to legalize it 鈥?especially if it includes online betting.

"Online sports betting in New York is single biggest opportunity we see emerging in next few years," said James Kilsby, managing director of GamblingCompliance.

So far, at least, it appears the sports betting market will be robust. Bettors in New Jersey have already embraced the limited rollout there, and five other states are on track to offer betting by the upcoming NFL season.

Whether the sports leagues end up getting a piece of the action remains to be seen. New Jersey specifically cut the leagues out Keelan Cole Jersey , not surprising because they fought the state in court for years over efforts to legalize sports betting, and there is no fee in any of the states on the verge of offering bets.

But with the so-called integrity fee floundering, the leagues are moving in another direction. The latest plan involves charging for the use of stats generated in their games because, as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this month, "it's ultimately our intellectual property, and we think we should be compensated for it."

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said much the same thing at the Stanley Cup Final in Las Vegas.

"If you're going to allocate for yourself to run a business on our intellectual property and the performance of our athletes and the platform that we put on for our games, we're entitled to be involved in that," Bettman said.

Unfortunately for the leagues, that ship has mostly sailed. Nevada built up a respectable 鈥?and profitable 鈥?sports betting business over the years with no help from the leagues, who fought sports betting at every turn and often warned about dire moral consequences should it be legalized outside the state.

For them to now want a cut of the action would be laughable if they weren't so serious about it.

The bottom line is the NBA didn't want anything to do with Las Vegas or legal betting. Neither did Major League Baseball or the NFL, which just a few years ago wouldn't even allow Las Vegas hotels to advertise on the Super Bowl broadcast because it was fearful that would somehow taint the game.

To reward them now would be nearly as foolish as banning sports betting was in the first place.

Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org or ://timdahlberg


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