NHL Notebook: Players speak on new playoff salary cap, Flames sign Dustin Wolf

A new National Hockey League season is bringing a new rule that is going to reshape how teams are structured during crunch time, and some of the biggest names in the game are giving their opinions on the matter.

During the first day of the NHL Player Media Tour in Las Vegas on Monday, several players were asked about the new salary cap that’s going to be implemented in this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The new postseason cap is part of the new four-year collective bargaining agreement, which was ratified in July by the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association. While the CBA is officially supposed to kick in for the 2026-27 season, the two parties acknowledged that the time was right to roll out portions of the new agreement this year, including the salary cap for the playoffs. It will force teams to be diligent with the lineups they can put together in their respective quests for Lord Stanley’s Cup.

In the past, teams have exploited long-term injured reserve loopholes. Organizations like the Tampa Bay Lightning, Vegas Golden Knights, and even the Edmonton Oilers, have practiced keeping players on the shelf for the final couple of months during the regular season, allowing them to go out and spend above the cap to acquire players at the trade deadline in hopes of bolstering their rosters during the postseason.

One of the recent examples of LTIR shenanigans was the Florida Panthers. After star forward Matthew Tkachuk went down with an injury during the 4 Nations Face-Off in February, the team placed him on LTIR, giving the ability to buy at the deadline without suffering any cap penalties. General manager Bill Zito was able to trade for Boston Bruins captain Brad Marchand, who played an important role in helping the Panthers win a second straight championship at the Oilers’ expense.

According to PuckPedia, the Panthers were $5 million over the $88 million salary cap.

Panthers forward Sam Reinhart had mixed feelings about the new postseason cap, especially since Florida ran into a Vegas team in 2023 that exploited the old rule.

“That’s out of our control,” Reinhart said. “We don’t put much into that. You hear about it with the winning team, the last couple of years, certainly in general, there’s been a lot of teams each playoffs that are in the same boat. We’ve been on both ends of it. You look at with our injuries and our first year against Vegas in the Final, I think the cap was a little bit [lower] too. The Trade Deadline is when all that gets finalized and you start to know what to expect with your roster going into it. In Florida, we just play our game and trust that the guys behind the scenes in the offices and suits are going to give us the best opportunity to succeed.”

Other players, such as Boston Bruins blueliner Charlie McAvoy, welcome the change.

“You shouldn’t be able to field a roster that’s $20 million over the cap,” McAvoy said. “I think everybody sort of understood that. If there was a pressing (CBA) issue you’d see play out immediately, that was probably the one. So I think that was a good job by (the NHL and NHLPA).”

The salary cap is up to $95.5 million for the 2025-26 campaign, with it projected to rise up to $104 million for the following year.

In other news, the Calgary Flames locked up their netminder of the future. On Tuesday, the team signed goaltender Dustin Wolf to a seven-year contract extension. The deal will kick in next season and will carry a $7.5 million AAV through the 2032-33 campaign.