-The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association have agreed to a four-year extension of the CBA, both sides announced in a news conference Friday.
“We can all look forward to at least five years more of labor peace of players’ association and the NHL working together,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said. “While we didn’t agree on everything, we had a very constructive, professional, and collaborative collective bargaining process.”
Bettman and NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh declined to go into details since the deal still needs to be ratified. However according to ESPN sources, the biggest change is an 84-game regular season and shortened preseason, which would kick in for the 2026-27 season.
Other highlights, according to sources: elimination of player dress code on game days, shortened contract lengths (max seven years for a player re-signing with his own club, six years in free agency), standardization of draft rights expiring when a player is 22, a solution for emergency backup goalies and revised language to fix the long-term injury reserve loophole that allowed teams to sit injured players in the regular season then go over the salary cap when they are activated for the playoffs.
Walsh said a midrange deal was important to the players as the league continues to evolve. The current CBA was a 10-year deal signed in 2013 then extended four years in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
“We had some players that came into this league under the last agreement and retired from the league under the last agreement,” Walsh said. “They never had a chance to really express their collective bargaining opinions or rights. Because generations of players change.”
Bettman said the league proposed longer but respected the players’ association stance.
Walsh praised the collaborative effort to get the deal done. They began negotiating around March.
“Even the complicated issues that came up were given complete thought on both sides,” Walsh said.
Bettman, the longest serving commissioner of any of the professional North American sports leagues, said negotiating with Walsh was a change of tone from previous CBA negotiations. Walsh, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor and Mayor of Boston, joined the NHLPA in 2023.
“It’s completely refreshing. It’s completely different than any of the previous experiences I’ve had so far,” Bettman said.
The league has experienced three lockouts in the past 20 years.
This is the first major negotiation for Walsh, a former Mayor of Boston and U.S. Secretary of Labor, who took over as executive director of the NHLPA in 2023. Walsh heavily canvassed players over the first half of last season for their input, before sitting down with Bettman early this year to hash out details. The current CBA expires after the 2025-26 season. A four-year extension would carry the league and its players through September 2030.
The NHL has welcomed steady growth following Revenue hit a record $6.2 billion for the 2023-24 season (updated figures for 2024-25 are not yet available) as the league also set new marks in attendance and saw a spike in sponsorship revenue, thanks to evolving attitudes on sports betting, helmet decals and showcasing individual players’ personalities.
The NHL and NHLPA have already announced significant salary cap increases over the next three seasons.
The new CBA is expected to maintain a 50-50 split of hockey related revenue between players and owners, according to sources.
