NHL to address LTIR loophole with playoff salary cap in new CBA
The NHL is taking steps to deal with the Long-Term Injury Reserve (LTIR) loophole.
For a number of years, teams could place a player on LTIR if they suffered an injury that would keep them out of the lineup for more than 10 games, taking their annual average value (AAV) off the salary cap while they were injured and allowing them to replace the player.
However, teams exploited this by keeping players on LTIR for large chunks of the season, then activating them once the playoffs began and the salary cap no longer applied. This led to scenarios where star players like Nikita Kucherov, Mark Stone and Matthew Tkachuk would be out of the lineup for months at a time, then return to the lineup in Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs.
But that no longer appears to be the case. According to Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, starting with the 2026-27 season, the league will institute a salary cap for the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which will consist of a 20-player lineup that can be shuffled from game-to-game.
New #NHL LTIR Playoff rule:
> Teams will only receive LTIR amount equal to prior season's Average League Salary (e.g. this year was something like ~$3.8m), unless player is definitely out for entirety of playoffs.
> Playoff salary cap will consist of 20 players in lineup. Rosters…
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) June 27, 2025
Seravalli also revealed that teams will only receive an LTIR amount equal to the prior season’s “average league salary,” unless the player is “definitely out” for the remainder of the playoffs.
On Friday, the NHL and the NHLPA announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding for a new collective bargaining agreement, with the current one expiring after the 2025-26 season. Seravalli was the first to report there would be an agreement on Thursday.