NHL Brushes Off State Income Tax Concern

With the Florida Panthers playing in their third straight Stanley Cup Final, a trend that already had a good deal of attention is now downright impossible to ignore.

The 2025 Stanley Cup Final is the sixth in a row to feature a team from a no-income-tax state, as before the Panthers' run of dominance, their in-state rival in the Tampa Bay Lightning also made three straight finals appearances. Additionally, four of the past five Stanley Cup champions (Lightning in 2020 and 2021, Vegas Golden Knights in 2023 and Panthers in 2024) hail from no-income-tax states, and it will be five of the past six if Florida repeats this year.

Fans of teams in states/provinces with higher income taxes have cried foul over the apparent imbalance at play, but unfortunately for them, they will have to deal with it a while longer. Before Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said there are no plans to address the tax imbalance in the upcoming collective bargaining agreement.

“Certainly, it’s an issue that some of our franchises have raised as a concern,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said, per Sportsnet. “What I’d say at this point is, we don't share the level of concern that they have."

“These imbalances have existed forever. Like, there’s nothing new here. There are so many reasons why a player may choose to play in a particular location, for a particular team, for a particular coach that have nothing to do with the tax situation in that market. So, I don't expect it’s anything we’re going to address proactively as part of this collective bargaining negotiation.” 

NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey, who won a Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017, said he's "baffled" that the issue has become as controversial as it has.

“From 2008 until 2020, who ran this league? Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, for a brief amount of time. Boston. Certainly (Brad) Marchand and (Patrice) Bergeron and (Zdeno) Chara could have made more money somewhere else. They didn't. They chose to stay,” Hainsey said. “They were a good team. Made for the finals a bunch of times. Pittsburgh — I’m certain Sid (Crosby) or Geno (Evgeni Malkin) or (Kris) Letang could’ve made more money somewhere else. They stayed there the whole time." 

“Why? Good team. Liked where they lived. Didn't want to move. Same thing in L.A. What do they all have in common? They all have a different tax situation from Florida, right? That was 12 years. Now we’ve had six years of Tampa, Tampa, Tampa, Florida, Florida, Florida. Just going off the previous 12, I guess we've got to wait six more years to see if there even is an issue, right?”

While the tax discrepancy may help the Florida-based teams, as well as a few others, they have done an outstanding job of building championship-caliber squads, as Hainsey argued.

“It’s the same thing that's happened the previous 12 years, right? With all these other teams,” Hainsey said. “Is it really an issue? You know, I'm not certain that it is at this point. I don't know if we could expect Florida and Tampa to not be great at some point in the cycle.”