Just a few weeks before the NHL preseason begins, the league has announced that parts of their Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NHL players association will be implemented this season instead of next season. One of the bigger changes being added will be cap compliant rosters for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The league has also banned deferred salaries, AHL paper loans, and instant double salary retention.
For years, fans across the league have been calling for the league to implement cap compliant rosters for the playoffs, as the Lightning, Golden Knights and Panthers have taken advantage of the loophole and won Stanley Cups. Now, teams will have to submit a 20-man roster that is cap compliant before each playoff game. Penalties for having a roster over the cap would likely be similar to regular season rules, which could result in Fines and possibly forfeited games.
The other rule changes have appeared more recently, but the league is making sure they don’t continue. Teams will no longer be able to defer salary on a players contract past the agreed upon term in order to save cap space. This means that contracts such as Jackson Blake’s extension with the Hurricanes would no longer be allowed in the future.
As for AHL paper loans, teams have been using this method to accrue cap space for the trade deadline, listing a player as being loaned to the teams respective AHL affiliate, but not reporting to the team. Now, any player sent down to the AHL must play at least one game with that team before being called up again.
The final change being immediate double salary retentions. Some trades, such as the Mikko Rantanen trade to Carolina, had Chicago join the trade as a third party broker, retaining extra salary on top of the salary the Avalanche already retained on the contract. This meant that Carolina received Rantanen at a cap hit far below the usual 50% retention allowed. Now, if any player is traded with salary retention, that player cannot be traded with retained salary again within the next 75 days, roughly two and a half months after the initial trade.
Stay tuned into PuckDropNHL for the latest news in the NHL world!
Leave a comment