New Rules In CBA Aim To Prevent NHL Salary Retention Chains

Miami Herald

13-07-2025

The NHL's recently-agreed-to new collective bargaining agreement has several areas in which the league and NHL Players' Association have clawed back certain aspects to make it more difficult to take the steps many teams have taken to limit their salary cap imprint. For instance, the new labor deal limits contract extensions to seven years for a team that re-signs its own player – down from eight years in the current CBA – and a reduction to six years (down from seven) for any team that signs another team's UFA. In this move, the league is essentially trying to save big-spending GMs from themselves.
That change is pretty much straightforward. However, there's another new element in the CBA that starts in the 2026-27 season that's somewhat more intricate, that being the new rule that states a second retained salary transaction for any contract can not occur within 75 regular-season days of the first retained salary transaction for the same contract. In essence, there are now going to be no more three-team trades completed to save salary.
What type of deals are being outlawed by this new rule? For starters, there's the February 2023 trade that sent star center Ryan O'Reilly from St. Louis to Toronto via Minnesota. The Blues retained 50 percent of Reilly's salary in the deal, while the Wild retained 25 percent of O'Reilly's salary before O'Reilly was ultimately sent to the Maple Leafs. That type of transaction would be strictly outlawed in the new rule.
Similarly, two trades that were consummated this past season will not be allowed under the new CBA. The first was the trading of veteran center Yanni Gourde from the Seattle Kraken to the Tampa Bay Lightning via the Detroit Red Wings. In that deal, the Kraken retained 50 percent of Gourde's contract, while the Wings retained 25 percent of Gourde's contract before he was moved to Tampa Bay.
At the risk of repeating ourselves, in the new labor deal, only one team would be permitted to retain a player's contract, at least, in a 75-day window that doesn't include off-season days. So, unless a player is traded well in advance of each year's trade deadline, there's no chance their contract is going to be split up and retained by more than one team the way contracts have been broken up in recent years..
Finally, last season's swap that sent center Trent Frederic from the Boston Bruins to the Edmonton Oilers via the New Jersey Devils also would fail to follow the rule laid out in the next CBA. The Bruins retained 50 percent of Frederic's $2.3 million salary, while the Devils retained the other 50 percent of Frederic's contract before flipping him to the Oilers. That would be a clear no-no in the next labor deal.
In all these cases, teams worked the current system to their advantage. This is why teams employ cap experts like Maple Leafs assistant GM Brandon Pridham. These executives know the CBA inside and out, and they're paid handsomely to poke holes in each agreement for their team's benefit. And in every subsequent labor deal that comes down the pike, the NHL does its utmost to plug those exploited holes and prevent teams from continuing to subvert the system.
It's really the circle of life among hockey executives that we're talking about here. Players, their agents and teams are always going to be looking for a leg up on their opponents, and that includes pushing the envelope as far as they can in trades without being called out by the league for straight-ahead cap circumvention.
It's a delicate approach by teams, but in these cases, it's the difference between teams being able to make intricate deals or falling short in making them work under the cap. And regardless of the rule changes that are laid out in any new CBA, there will always be parties with a vested interest in skirting around regulations without flat-out breaking them. That's never going to change, even as the NHL does what it can to clamp down on "creative" approaches to trades.
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