NHL, NHLPA reach new collective bargaining agreement through 2030
After one of the quickest, smoothest negotiation processes between the two sides in recent memory, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association have achieved labor peace. As expected following Frank Seravalli’s report on Daily Faceoff Thursday, the NHL and NHPA held a press conference Friday announcing they’d signed a memorandum of understanding for a new collective bargaining agreement. The current one expires after the 2025-26 season.
“While we didn’t agree on everything, we had a very constructive, professional, collaborative collective bargaining process,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters at the presser. “I think we identified the issues that were important to both sides.”
“Compared to other negotiations I’ve been part of, and I’ve been part of an awful lot of them, this is a little different,” said NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh Friday. “It was three on the league side, three on the PA side. We went back and forth, very open dialogue. Even the complicated issues that might have come up, we’re giving complete thought on both sides, and we’re able to get to some good resolutions here. So happy with the process, and hopefully the players will be happy with the outcome.”
Per Seravalli, the deal represents the earliest resolution relative to the expiry of the existing CBA during Gary Bettman’s entire 32-year tenure as NHL commissioner. The new CBA will run from Sept. 16, 2026 through Sept. 15, 2030.
“I like having contracts for five years at the max, so you have an opportunity to see what’s right and if there’s a mistake we can fix it [somewhere] down the road,” Walsh said. “I just think it’s important. For longer-term contracts, your players in the league that played have never gone through negotiations. So we have some players that came into this league under the last agreement and retired in this league under the last agreement and they never had a chance to really express their collective bargaining opinions or rights. So I just feel it’s important for us to try and capture the thoughts and process of the players at that time because as you know, this generation of players [changes], so we want to make sure we get them active in it.”
Bettman, Walsh, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey took take questions from media Friday after announcing the CBA news. But because the MOA must be ratified by the players, clubs and Board of Governors, the NHL and NHLPA revealed few details about their agreement on Friday.
That said, most of the need-to-know information about the new CBA was already reported Thursday by Seravalli. The full details can be found here, but the key tenets of the new CBA are expected to include an 84-game season, with a shortened pre-season; max terms on contracts shrinking to seven years for players re-signing and six years on the open market; a playoff salary cap mechanism to address the LTIR loophole; outlawing deferred salary in contracts; removing mandates for player dress code when arriving at and departing games: and more.
The NHL and NHLPA expect the MOA to be ratified “over the next week or so,” keeping expectations realistic given the draft is this weekend and free agency launches on Tuesday.
“On all aspects of the build of the business, whether it’s how you construct your team and looking at salary caps, players anticipating what type of contracts they can negotiate, what we do with our business partners, whether it’s media or sponsors and advertisers, it gives everybody a sense of stability, a sense of certainty, a sense of optimism that everything’s going well and will continue to fuel the growth that we’ve seen,” Bettman said. “It’s all good.”
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