Since the global recession struck a year ago some hockey pundits have suggested the NHL's salary cap for the 2010-11 season could see a significant decline. 

Some pundits suggested the cap could decline to $52 million. A few reports over the past year suggested the cap could drop by as much as 20 percent. 

League commissioner Gary Bettman however dismissed that possibility. As player agent Alan Walsh noted on his Twitter account, Bettman recently said, "Season ticket renewals league wide are about where it was last year."

The commissioner "is not expecting (revenues) to be down. Based on prelim projections, we're going to be flat to up a little bit".

That's potentially good news for teams like Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Detroit who are already bumping up against this season's cap ceiling and would have great difficulty re-signing key players if the cap went down. 

Of course a stagnant or slight increase isn't likely to prevent some of those teams from engaging in some salary dumping moves but at least it wouldn't mean they'd risk gutting their roster depth to retain their stars.