Impact of fast-tracked NHL CBA rules on the 2025–26 season

Back in July, the NHL Players’ Association ratified a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that was set to take effect to start the 2026–27 NHL season. However, as of Tuesday, the NHL and NHLPA have decided to fast-track portions of the new CBA, allowing them to come in to play to begin the 2025–26 season.

The elements from the new CBA that are being fast-tracked include a playoff salary cap, changes to the existing LTIR rules, and the end of deferred compensation in NHL contracts, among other provisions. So with these new changes arriving a full season sooner than expected, let’s go through some of the more notable changes arriving in the 2025–26 NHL season.

Playoff salary cap and changes to LTIR rules

In previous years, NHL teams have been able to place injured players on the LTIR, sign a player within the injured player’s pay range, and then still bring back the injured player during the postseason without any roster or financial shifting. This was seen most recently when Florida Panthers star winger Matthew Tkachuk was on the LTIR for the second half of the 2024–25 season. Using the extra cap room, the Panthers were able to trade for veteran winger Brad Marchand, as well as defencemen Seth Jones and Nico Sturm. When playoff time came around, Tkachuk was brought back into the fold without any cap issues, and Jones and Marchand wound up being key contributors in the Panthers’ Cup victory.

That won’t be happening this coming season, though, as the new rules will allow teams to use cap-space equivalent to the injured player’s annual salary, but only if the player isn’t expected to return for the remainder of the season or playoffs.

The new system

For LTIR-eligible players that are expected to return before the end of the regular season or during the postseason, teams will now only get to increase their cap by the previous season’s average league salary. The average NHL salary in 2024–25 was $3,817,293, so any player on a team’s LTIR making above that amount, and who is expected to return during the regular season or playoffs, will be capped at that average in terms of added cap-room for teams.

Then, for the playoffs specifically, in each individual postseason game, the total cap hit for all of a team’s dressed players must be at or under the cap ceiling for that season. Keep in mind, performance and games played bonuses are excluded from a player’s playoff cap hit, and a player’s full-season cap hit is used, even if the player was acquired or called up at a later point in the season.

No more deferred compensation

Deferred compensation deals weren’t super prevalent in the league, but they did exist. Essentially, these deals allowed NHL clubs to free up cap space by paying portions of a player’s salary after their contract had already ended. If used correctly, a team could potentially take advantage of this type of deal and load up its roster for a period of time, without having to worry about paying out large sums of money until the deals had already expired.

One team that most notably used deferred payments in player contracts was the Carolina Hurricanes, who re-signed centre Seth Jarvis and defenceman Jaccob Slavin with this method. Jarvis is currently on an eight-year $59.36M deal, with $15.67M being paid out after the deal finishes in July 2032. Slavin’s deferred payment in his deal, which pays him $51.17M over eight years, isn’t as big, but still substantial, with his Year 7 signing bonus of $4.55M getting deferred to July 1, 2033, after his contract is up. But with this type of deal going out the window, Slavin and Jarvis will mark the last two players paid out in this fashion.

Prevention of salary retention chains

The final element of the CBA coming into play in 2025–26 that we will be covering involves the extent to which player salaries can be retained by other teams following trades. Until now, up to two retentions have been allowed on a single player’s contract. This has allowed teams to acquire players for far less in three-team trades where a percentage of a player’s salary is retained by two different teams, leaving the team actually acquiring the player with far less of a financial burden.

An example of this was the February 2023 trade that sent Ryan O’Reilly from the St. Louis Blues to the Toronto Maple Leafs via the Minnesota Wild. In this deal, the Blues retained 50% of O’Reilly’s salary, while the Wild retained 25%. However, this coming season, deals like this will come to an end, as a new rule in the CBA makes it so that a second retained salary transaction on any contract cannot occur until at least 75 regular-season days have passed since the initial salary retention.

Don’t get us wrong, three-team deals will still happen. But, they will no longer involve two different teams retaining salary on a player’s contract when that player isn’t being sent to their team in the deal.