With NHL revenue projected to hit $6.2 billion this season, league sources told Daily Faceoff that players could expect to receive approximately half of the escrow withheld from their paychecks this season returned to them after final accounting and auditing.
This season, six percent of player salaries have been withheld in escrow to ensure a 50-50 split between players and owners, as called for in the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NHL Players’ Association.
Commissioner Gary Bettman said last week that hockey-related revenue is projected to settle around $6.2 billion USD according to the league’s latest calculation. If that $6.2 billion projection is accurate, then the current calculation calls for roughly half of the six percent that has been withheld, to be returned to players.
“We were expecting a strong and vibrant season, and it has been that from a business standpoint,” Bettman said last week at the GM meetings in Florida.
That $6.2 billion projection is, of course, dependent on playoff returns and revenue, which can be boosted or diminished by the markets involved in the 16-team Stanley Cup playoffs. Players watching the playoffs from home this spring should be rooting for big market teams with high ticket prices and large corporate partners. Because additional revenue, potentially sparked by deep playoff runs in New York, Toronto, Edmonton or Boston, could result in more money returned to players.
Since upwards of half of the escrow withholding could be returned to players, it also calls into question whether the NHL Players’ Association could or should have pushed harder for a higher salary cap for this season. Under new executive director Marty Walsh, the NHLPA engaged in discussions on raising the $83.5 million salary cap as prescribed by the Memorandum of Understanding. But the NHL requested givebacks in return, saying that they would also have to raise the escrow withholding percentage commensurately.
The NHLPA did not budge because players felt a locked-in escrow rate of six percent was one of their wins of the current CBA, and many contracts were negotiated to account for a predictable escrow rate, which previously fluctuated. But this latest news is proof that the NHL could have agreed to raise the salary cap for this season while not also increasing escrow withholding.
Raising the salary cap would have injected more total dollars into the system, providing for more flexibility and spending for teams, as well as more union jobs. With the salary cap frozen for a fourth consecutive season at $83.5 million this year, many teams were forced to play with minimum roster sizes below the 23-man limit for cap reasons, resulting in the loss of approximately 25 full-time jobs over the course of the season across the league.
The salary cap is set to increase five percent to $87.7 million in 2024-25, as prescribed by the Memorandum of Understanding, and escrow withholding is again locked in at six percent next season.
Given that revenue is reportedly strong and the $1.1 billion debt from pandemic-related losses has now been repaid by players to owners, a window is open to negotiate an even higher salary cap next season than prescribed in the MOU, but only if both sides are willing to play ball. If not, the league will continue with the already agreed upon five percent salary cap increases and six percent escrow withheld until this current CBA expires on Sept. 15, 2026.
When NHL players would receive the potential return of escrow withholding from this season is unclear. Sources say multiple previous seasons of HRR are still under audit and dispute, with a few hundred million dollars of revenue in question.
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