Sources: NHL, NHLPA preparing to announce new CBA framework on Friday

Jun 26, 2025, 15:24 EDT

Credit: Feb 12, 2025; Montreal, Quebec, CAN; [Imagn Images direct customers only] NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh addresses the press sitting beside NHL commissioner Gary Bettman before a 4 Nations Face-Off ice hockey game at Bell Centre. Mandatory Credit: David Kirouac-Imagn Images

LOS ANGELES — The NHL and NHL Players’ Association are on the verge of unprecedented labor peace that will provide jet fuel for hockey’s growth over the next half decade. Sources indicate the NHL and NHLPA are putting the final touches on a Memorandum of Understanding for a four-year extension to their Collective Bargaining Agreement, the framework of which could be announced as soon as Friday ahead of the Draft.

The MOU must be signed by both parties ahead of a Friday announcement, but they were closing in on a handshake agreement on Wednesday with one outstanding issue pending. A formal ratification process would follow.

Ratification won’t be an issue. Though there was no vote taken, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman provided his Board of Governors with an extensive update on negotiations here on Wednesday, while concurrently in Las Vegas the NHLPA’s executive board was apprised of the details and unanimously gave executive director Marty Walsh the green light to agree to terms.

The four-year extension would kick in on Sept. 16, 2026 and carry through Sept. 15, 2030. With one more year remaining on this current CBA, that would provide five total years of continuity for a league with three previous work stoppages on record. This is the earliest the NHL and NHLPA will have concluded an extension prior to expiration in Bettman’s 32-year run as commissioner.

Here are some pertinent details of the agreement, according to both league and union sources:

The NHL will move to 84-game regular seasons beginning in 2026-27. The preseason will be shortened, to an expected four games per team, and players with 100-plus career games played can play in a maximum of two preseason games.
Player contracts will be term limited to a maximum of seven years for players re-signing with their current club and six years for players on the free agent market. The 2025-26 season (next week’s free agency) will mark the final eight-year deals in the NHL.
A comprehensive playoff salary cap mechanism, which has many machinations to account for player acquisition, will effectively close the LTIR loophole for teams to significantly pad payroll by using injury relief space.
Signing rights to draft picks will be uniform across the board until age 22, regardless of the league prospects are picked from or which league they matriculate to next. In other words, if an 18-year-old CHL player is drafted but decided to play NCAA, a team will still hold his rights for four years.
Outlawing of player deferred salary in contracts, which previously lowered the cap hit of deals. This is one example of significantly more stringent contractual limitations that are expected to be in the new CBA for players.
One example of a new limitation: Signing bonuses will be capped at 60 percent. Previously, players could negotiate to earn everything but the league minimum salary on their contract to be paid as signing bonus for both tax and investment benefits, as well as making it essentially buyout proof. Now, if you have a $10 million cap hit, the maximum paid in signing bonus will be $6 million. Players can still earn more than the 60 percent in signing bonus, but that difference will be subject to the buyout calculation.
Revenue split will remain 50/50 between owners and players. There are not expected to be changes to the definitions of what constitutes hockey related revenue (HRR).
Significant increase in Stanley Cup playoff bonus pool fund, nearly doubling previous amount.
Establishment of ‘full-time’ Emergency Backup Goalie (EBUG) position within organizations so that amateur goalies signed out of beer league are not entering games in rare injury circumstances.
Landmark player benefit improvements (health insurance and post-playing health insurance stipends), plus movement of player payroll taxes and worker’s compensation premiums to be paid out of owner’s share.
Teams will no longer be able to mandate player dress code for arriving/departing games.
As previously announced in February, the next three seasons of the salary cap’s upper limit: $95.5 million, $104 million and $113 million.

The two sides have gone back and forth drafting language for the MOU for weeks in preparation for a potential Friday announcement. Once ratified, the NHL and NHLPA would then embark on a longer process to paper the CBA into a more formal document, which could prove a little tricky. When the CBA was extended in 2020 during the pandemic, the two sides have since been playing on the terms of that MOU. Now, they will need to blend that MOU with the skeleton of the last full version CBA from 2013 – and also with the new agreement for 2026-30. But that’s all academic.

It’s difficult to overstate how significant this extension is for league business and the overall health of the game. Since Walsh, then the sitting U.S. Secretary of Labor, was appointed head of the player’s union in 2023, the NHL and NHLPA both boasted that this is the least contentious and most constructive relationship between the two sides in decades. With a new CBA hammered out and the NHL and NHLPA jointly charging past $7 billion in annual revenue, they just proved that isn’t a nicety but the genuine article as they march on together in lockstep.

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