rsteen
Registered User
- Oct 1, 2022
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2026 NHL CBA Negotiations, Issues. Negotions start first week of April 2025
- Thread starter LadyStanley
- Start date
Yukon Joe
Registered User
First of all they kind of already are - through escrow.
As you know a certain % of salaries are held back in escrow. The more the league grows revenues the mroe of the escrow is given back to the players. I believe if league HRR is big enough the league will even pay players a bonus on top of their salaries in order to guarantee the 50/50 HRR split.
Secondly though - I think most players just want to put their heads down and play hockey. Even if you're the biggest star in the world like McDavid - you can do all the media, all the endorsements - and it really is going to make a very small difference to your individual take-home pay. If you're a third line winger on a bubble team - nothing you do is going to make a difference to league HRR.
It's hardly a new idea. It's one of the ideas that was rejected back in 2005 when they impemented the cap.
GKJ
Global Moderator
- Feb 27, 2002
- 185,804
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Kinda feels like there’s very little that could change.
If I were the PA, with the way the cap is going to start to move, I would see if I can get opt-outs, similar to baseball. It would not only help them earn more, but some of these teams who end up with bad contracts could get out of them easier.
If I were the PA, with the way the cap is going to start to move, I would see if I can get opt-outs, similar to baseball. It would not only help them earn more, but some of these teams who end up with bad contracts could get out of them easier.
You're simply talking about the mechanisms for making sure that the players as a whole get their 50% of HRR.
What's being talked about by Marek is the idea that a player wouldn't have a fixed salary but would instead have a fixed cap percentage. For example, If a player had a cap percentage of 10% and the cap was at 90M, their salary for that year (which would be adjusted using escrow and other methods to ensure the players get their 50% of HRR) wouldtbe 9M. If the next year, the cap went up to 100M, the player would get a salary of 10M, and so on. If teams spent to the cap in such a system, it would effecitvely make it very similar to a flat cap.
If (and quite massive IF) a player like Elias Petterson end up traded before the trade protection in his massive contract kicks in and the sole reason he didn’t have trade protection is that he wasn’t eligible for it yet, could that elevate into an issue to be discussed as part of the CBA? Practically allowing NTC/NMC in all years of an agreement extending into UFA years.
Would it affect too small number of players to be a meaningful issue?
I think that guaranteed contracts are too massive boon for the players that they would not introduce anything that could erode that.
mouser
Business of Hockey
Anything could be the subject of CBA negotiations, though I'd guess this would be lower on the PA priority list. Fundamentally the argument would be whether or not players should be able to negotiate trade protection for RFA years.
The PA has already made substantial gains in trade protection:
- Trade protection now automatically carries over in trades, even if the player waived to be traded.
- Contract extensions can include retroactive trade protection if the player was eligible to receive trade protection in the final year of their contract leading up to the extension.
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
I'd seriously doubt they would do that. You'd need really, really strong sentiment in favor of it in order to put it on the league's radar as something the NHLPA wants. It immediately becomes a negotiating point. Do you really think there's anything the players would be willing to give up to go to a 1-8?
Will the new CBA allow one buyout to not count against the cap? Did the current CBA
have that?
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
The current agreement, signed in 2020, did not have compliance buyouts. I would be surprised to see it. The compliance buyouts only happened because the cap was being lowered through a CBA agreement, rather than through the course of normal cap calculations. We're not going to see anything remotely like that in this round.
CBA talks starts around 2:45 in.
Don't expect blow by blow news out of talks. If something comes out, it may be bad news.
League and union to talk about playoff "cap". (But who knows if they can come to an agreement. )
