Latest news with #NHLPlayersAssociation
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
NHL, NHLPA reach agreement on new labor deal: Reported details
The NHL and NHL Players' Association announced that they have to agreed a new four-year collective-bargaining agreement on June 27. It will take effect after the current one expires in September 2026 and run through 2030. The memorandum of understanding still needs to be ratified by the owners and the players. "We can all look forward to at least five years more of labor peace," said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who didn't reveal details out of respect for the ratification process. According to multiple reports, however, the length of the regular season will increase and there will be changes to the maximum length of player contracts and the establishment of a postseason salary cap. The two sides previously announced a significant jump in the the salary cap over the next three seasons. Here are the key details of the collective bargaining agreement, per reports, and what it means: 84-game regular season It's currently at 82 games and will change with the 2026-27 season. This will allow teams to play every team within their division an even number of games. Under the current setup, teams play four games against division opponents and three games against others. To account for the increased number of regular-season games, the league would cut the number of preseason games by two. Veteran players aren't fond of preseason games and there have injuries during those, including to Los Angeles Kings defenseman Rob Blake in 2024. One-year cut in contract lengths The current maximum length is eight years for re-signing and seven years for signing with a new team. Those numbers will drop to seven and six. This is a further change from the earlier days when teams offered contracts in the double-digit lengths with a big portion up front and less at the end to lower the overall salary cap hit. Playoff salary cap Currently, there is no salary cap in the playoffs, just in the regular season. Teams were able to put players on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) and exceed the salary cap by the amount of their salaries. For example, Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov missed the entire 2020-01 season after offseason hip surgery but returned for the playoffs and helped the Lightning win a second consecutive Stanley Cup title. Tampa Bay used the LTIR exception to add to their roster during the season. A postseason salary cap would close off that loophole. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NHL, NHLPA agree to new CBA. Here are details, per reports
Al Arabiya
14-07-2025
- Sport
- Al Arabiya
Panthers' 2nd stanley cup banner raising set for oct. 7 before hosting blackhawks to open nhl season
The Florida Panthers are set to raise their second consecutive Stanley Cup banner before beginning the NHL season against the Chicago Blackhawks. The back-to-back champions play at 5 p.m. EDT on October 7 to lead off an opening night tripleheader the league announced Monday. Florida defeated Edmonton in the teams Cup final rematch and is aiming for the NHL's first threepeat since the New York Islanders dynasty from 1980–83. Also on October 7, the New York Rangers host the Pittsburgh Penguins at 8 p.m. with the Colorado Avalanche visiting the Los Angeles Kings at 10:30 p.m. EDT. The remainder of the schedule is set to be released Wednesday. This is the final 82-game regular season before going to 84 in 2026–27 as part of a collective bargaining agreement extension agreed to and ratified by the league and the Players Association. The 2025–26 schedule includes a break for players to participate in the Milan-Cortina Olympics the NHL's return to that stage for the first time since 2014.
New York Times
28-06-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Exclusive: What's in the new NHL CBA? Digging into the memorandum of understanding
The NHL will introduce a playoff salary cap as part of the collective bargaining agreement extension it signed with the NHL Players' Association on Friday, league sources told The Athletic. The four-year extension, which must still be ratified in separate votes by the owners and players and won't go into effect until the 2026-27 season, calls for the creation of two rules to curb the use of the long-term injury exception to the salary cap in instances where an injured player returns for the playoffs. Advertisement The first will place limitations on the extra cap space a team will receive when a player goes on LTIR during the regular season. Teams will only be allowed to exceed the cap by an amount equal to the prior season's average salary — unless the NHL and NHLPA approve the full amount, which will only happen when there is no doubt the player will miss the entire remainder of the season, including the playoffs. The second will see a cap introduced during the playoffs that will apply only to the 20 players suiting up for each game. Teams will be able to shuffle their rosters between games. In the event the playoff cap has unintended consequences, the NHL and NHLPA have the right to reopen the agreement on this issue. Here are some of the other key points included in the CBA extension, based on a summary of the memorandum of understanding obtained by The Athletic. The NHL regular season will be increased from 82 to 84 games starting with the 2026-27 season. To accommodate this increase, training camp will be shortened from 21 days to 13 — 18 for rookies — with one day off during the first week. Each team will be limited to four exhibition games, and players with 100 or more career NHL games (including games dressed for goaltenders) will be capped at two exhibition games. The current idea is to start the regular season in late September and have the Stanley Cup awarded by June 21, according to league sources. The two extra games added in the regular season will be divisional games. The NHL's minimum salary will jump each season of the new agreement from its current level of $775,000. The new minimums will be as follows: Salary retention will still be allowed in trades, but with an interesting tweak: A second retention on the same contract can only happen 75 regular-season days after the first one, which nixes the use of a third-party broker in real time as has been seen in numerous instances at recent trade deadlines. Advertisement The players' playoff fund is set to take a significant jump from its current level of $24 million during the next CBA, with the league paying the entirety of the amounts off-share (i.e. it won't come out of shared hockey-releated revenue). The fund will grow as follows: Teams will no longer be allowed to implement a dress code for players. Instead, there will be a leaguewide dress code requiring only that players dress in a manner consistent with 'contemporary fashion norms.' Neck protection will become mandatory for all players entering the league starting with the 2026-27 season, with a minimum protection level of A5. Players with at least one NHL game will be grandfathered and will not be subject to the rule. Teams will be allowed to employ a permanent emergency backup goaltender who will travel with the club. The maximum term of contracts will be reduced by one year, with a contract capped at seven years if a player re-signs with his existing club before reaching free agency and six years if he signs with a new club. The existing agreement allowing players to participate in the Olympics will be extended to cover the 2030 Games in the French Alps. When a player seeks a second medical opinion and the second opinion doctor and team doctor disagree on diagnosis and/or treatment, the two doctors will now select a third doctor to help resolve the dispute. The team must give due consideration to the opinion of the third expert prior to determining the final course of treatment and must also pay the reasonable costs of the third doctor. The NHL and NHLPA will establish a retired players emergency healthcare and wellness fund. Advertisement The NHL will contribute $4 million annually to the fund. Players will no longer be prohibited from endorsing wine and spirits. Fitness testing will no longer be permitted during training camp or the regular season. A small change to NHL bye weeks: Waiver-exempt players who have played in at least 15 of their team's past 20 games before the beginning of a bye week will be entitled to the time off at NHL salary and benefit levels so long as they are not loaned to the minors prior to the team's fourth-to-last game before its break. The variability rules for front-loaded contracts will change as follows: Year-over-year increases will be limited to 20 percent of the first year, down from 25 percent. And the lowest year of the contract must be at least 71 percent of the highest year, up from 60 percent previously. For example, if the highest year's compensation is $10 million, the lowest year's compensation cannot be less than $7.1 million. And the year-to-year differences cannot exceed $2 million. The NHL is eliminating 'paper loans,' which occurred when players were assigned to the AHL on paper only and never had to report to the minor-league club. That practice reduced the players' compensation because they were paid at the AHL rate for the days that they were on loan. The CBA extension requires that a loaned player play in one minor league game before being recalled. There will be standardized retention periods for drafted players based on their age that no longer account for whether they are selected from the CHL, Europe or NCAA. For those selected at age 18, teams will retain their rights until the fourth June 1 after they were drafted. For players drafted at age 19 or above, teams will retain their rights until the third June 1 after they were drafted. Advertisement The only exception to these rules is for players in the NCAA at the time of expiration. Their rights will be extended until 30 days after notifying NHL they are no longer playing college hockey. In the current CBA, European players aged 25 to 27 are required to sign entry-level contracts. That will no longer be the case under the new rules. European players that age will now be treated the same as all other players. As previously reported, deferred payments in contracts will no longer be allowed. For example, the $2 million deferred bonus payment in John Tavares' new contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs would no longer be allowed starting in 2026-27. But Tavares is fine, as his deal was signed under the existing rules. Same for other players who have already signed deferred payment contracts, such as the Anaheim Ducks' Frank Vatrano, the Maple Leafs' Jake McCabe, and the Carolina Hurricanes' Seth Jarvis and Jaccob Slavin. Among the wins for the players is the fact that owners will now completely cover payments for workers' compensation and employer payroll taxes. Under the proposed CBA, the $70 million annual cost will be completely removed from the players' share of revenues and become the responsibility of the owners. (Top photo of NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
New York Times
27-06-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Explaining the new NHL CBA: Season lengthened, contracts shortened, EBUGs squashed
There will be labor peace in the NHL until 2030. That is the top takeaway after the league and NHL Players' Association announced they had come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement on Friday in Los Angeles. The new agreement begins in the fall of 2026 — after the current COVID-19 era CBA expires — and runs for four years until the September after the 2029-30 season. Exact details on everything are still not fully available, as owners and players need to ratify the deal. But here are the most interesting changes, with some thoughts on why they're being implemented and what they might mean for the league and its players. There has been a general sense for years that the preseason has become too long and onerous around the league. In 2024-25, NHL teams played an average of 6.5 exhibition games before the regular season began, including five teams playing eight games. That number is going to be limited to four preseason games per team beginning in 2026, and veteran players will be limited to playing in only two of them. The number of regular season games per team, meanwhile, will be increased from 82 to 84. Advertisement The NHL has played 84 games in a season twice before (in 1992-93 and 1993-94), so this isn't unprecedented. And regular season games are obviously preferable to preseason ones, both financially and from an entertainment perspective. While the season is already overlong in general, the good news is the plan will be to start the regular season in late September and spread the games out over more time, so there will be fewer back-to-backs and player fatigue. With the Olympics and World Cup being jammed into the schedule in 2026 and 2028, more breathing room makes sense. But it's a shame the NHL can't ensure the Stanley Cup is given out before mid-June going forward. This closes a loophole that teams have been increasingly exploiting in recent years. It likely started with the 2015 Chicago Blackhawks, who placed Patrick Kane on long-term injured reserve and added a bunch of talent at the trade deadline using the salary cap space before activating Kane for the playoffs and going on to win another Stanley Cup. In the years since, the Tampa Bay Lightning, Vegas Golden Knights, Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers (among others) have all used LTIR to add more talent to their playoff rosters, creating a system where there's now an obvious benefit to 'slow playing' injuries throughout the season and having players suddenly healthy in the postseason. Instituting a playoff salary cap will be complex, however, as the league's accounting allows for teams to accrue salary cap room throughout the year and add big salaries late in the regular season. Injuries are another complication when it comes to the cap, and there may be legitimate situations where new rules will have unintended consequences here. We have to wait and see what these rules look like when the full CBA fine print is released, but the NHL needs to be careful it doesn't create situations where teams are sitting good players in key playoff games simply to make the numbers work. Advertisement NHL executives debated at length over what to push for on contract term length throughout this process, with some wanting to keep the current eight years to extend with your own team and seven to sign with another team, and others wanting shorter limits on deals. In the end, a compromise was reached: Lower the term limit number by one, with players only able to sign for seven years with their own team and six with another one as a free agent. This rule will be put into effect beginning in the fall of 2026, so it's not believed to limit, say, Connor McDavid signing an eight-year extension with the Oilers in the next 12 months. (Not that this scenario is likely.) Even though it feels like a subtle change, multiple executives and player agents I talked to today said this very well could end up being the most significant shift in this CBA. Unrestricted free agents only being able to sign for six years in other markets, for example, will likely lead to higher per-year contract values and more player movement in general, as star players will no longer be able to stretch their contract values out as much and will be more likely to change teams in their primes. Other new contractual limitations — such as that signing bonuses, currently uncapped, will be limited at 60 percent of salaries per year, and that the year-to-year variance on deals will be dropped from 25 to 20 percent, according to league sources — will also contribute to top players getting higher AAVs on their deals, as contracts will not be able to be as frontloaded or buyout-proof as they have been in the past. With fewer avenues for GMs and agents to get creative, the main flex point will increasingly become being able to offer more money, which could see the NHL's middle class squeezed more as teams try to accommodate their stars. Advertisement One group that may not be squeezed as much? The players on the league's absolute low end. The current NHL league minimum salary of $775,000 will rise to $1 million over the next several seasons, meaning guaranteed growth of roughly 30 percent for those depth players. Depending on how fast the cap accelerates under this agreement, that could be close to in line with overall cap growth by 2029, meaning fourth-liners and callups will be getting a reasonable share of the NHL's revenue growth. What isn't changing from the last two agreements is that the owners and players will continue to split league revenue, 50-50. How that gets divided up among the various players, though, is what could continue to shift in new directions with the new provisions coming in. The NHL didn't love the optics of having amateur goalies — like David Ayres, a Zamboni driver who famously won a game for the Carolina Hurricanes against the Maple Leafs back in 2020 — enter games when teams had multiple netminders go down with injuries. Now teams will be able to carry their own third-string professional goalie for this purpose. Details are scarce as to how this will work and what those players will be paid. I'm on the record as seeing this problem as overblown, personally, as it happens so infrequently that dedicating a job to the role feels like overkill. That's money that will, presumably, come out of other players' pockets. Plus, EBUGs are always amazing stories. NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh addressed the CBA's four-year length up front at Friday's press conference, pointing out that NHL careers can be short and that there had been players who had retired while only playing under one collective agreement in the past. Advertisement Shorter is better, in other words, Walsh argued, and the league was on board with that. The good news is the two sides were able to get this deal done in record time — more than a year ahead of schedule — creating a lot of stability for a league that has endured far too many lockouts in the past and seems to be enjoying some positive financial momentum right now. And 2030 feels a long time away, too. (Photo of Walsh, left, and Bettman: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NHL, NHLPA reach agreement on new labor deal: Reported details
The NHL and NHL Players' Association announced that they have to agreed a new four-year collective-bargaining agreement on June 27. It will take effect after the current one expires in September 2026 and run through 2030. The memorandum of understanding still needs to be ratified by the owners and the players. Advertisement "We can all look forward to at least five years more of labor peace," said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who didn't reveal details out of respect for the ratification process. According to multiple reports, however, the length of the regular season will increase and there will be changes to the maximum length of player contracts and the establishment of a postseason salary cap. The two sides previously announced a significant jump in the the salary cap over the next three seasons. Here are the key details of the collective bargaining agreement, per reports, and what it means: 84-game regular season It's currently at 82 games and will change with the 2026-27 season. This will allow teams to play every team within their division an even number of games. Under the current setup, teams play four games against division opponents and three games against others. Advertisement To account for the increased number of regular-season games, the league would cut the number of preseason games by two. Veteran players aren't fond of preseason games and there have injuries during those, including to Los Angeles Kings defenseman Rob Blake in 2024. One-year cut in contract lengths The current maximum length is eight years for re-signing and seven years for signing with a new team. Those numbers will drop to seven and six. This is a further change from the earlier days when teams offered contracts in the double-digit lengths with a big portion up front and less at the end to lower the overall salary cap hit. Playoff salary cap Currently, there is no salary cap in the playoffs, just in the regular season. Teams were able to put players on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) and exceed the salary cap by the amount of their salaries. For example, Tampa Bay Lightning winger Nikita Kucherov missed the entire 2020-01 season after offseason hip surgery but returned for the playoffs and helped the Lightning win a second consecutive Stanley Cup title. Tampa Bay used the LTIR exception to add to their roster during the season. A postseason salary cap would close off that loophole. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NHL, NHLPA agree to new CBA. Here are details, per reports
