Earlier this summer, the NHL and NHLPA agreed to a four-year extension of their collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The deal included a number of amendments. With the current CBA terms expiring at the end of the 2025-26 season, there was a question as to which changes would apply immediately and which would go into effect a year from now when the extension officially kicks in.
Now we have our answer.
As listed by Puckpedia.com, the rule changes now in place as part of the CBA include:
- New Playoff Salary Cap
- Limits/changes to LTIR, reducing the benefits a team receives on LTIR
- No Deferred Compensation (effective Oct 7, 2025)
- Restriction on Paper Loans
- Restriction on a second retention on a traded contract
- Four Recall rule
New Playoff Salary Cap
The new playoff salary cap is the most significant change and will go into effect for the upcoming playoffs. Under the new rule, there is now a 'playoff salary cap compliance requirement'. This means teams must submit a playoff roster where the aggregate cap hit of all active players cannot exceed the upper salary cap limit. The upper limit for the 2025-26 season is $95.5 million.
This effectively closes a loophole that the Leafs have used in the past, where they could load up on players without any restriction once the playoffs began and bolster their lineup. The Leafs, of course, were not the only team to do this, nor were they the team that exploited this rule the most. Previous Stanley Cup champions like the Chicago Blackhawks, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, and Vegas Golden Knights were teams that used the mechanism regularly.
There are also some daily cap accumulation accounting changes that may prohibit teams from acquiring a dead contract, for example. If a team does acquire Carey Price’s cap hit, that contract may still count for the playoff roster, even though he didn’t play. Dead caps, buyouts, and overagers would hit the playoff cap on a pro-rated basis.
Limits/changes to LTIR, reducing the benefits a team receives on LTIR
In the past, when a player was placed on long-term injured reserve (LTIR), a team could maximize the player's full salary cap hit. Now, that number will not be allowed to exceed the lower of the player’s cap hit or the average salary from the previous season. The average salary last year, according to Puckpedia, was $3,817,293. There is still a provision where the team could get more in cap relief, but the player has to be determined to be medically unfit for both the remainder of the regular season and Stanley Cup playoffs to be eligible.
No Deferred Compensation (effective Oct 7, 2025)
A contract that consists of money paid out after the end of the contract is no longer permitted as of Oct. 7. This is the first day that the NHL starts calculating the salary cap for the 2025-26 season. If the Leafs want to extend a player with that type of provision, they have until Oct. 6. The Maple Leafs used the provision twice last season. The Leafs re-signed defenseman Jake McCabe and used deferred money to bring his salary cap hit down to $4.51 million. Toronto did that again this summer when they signed John Tavares to a four-year extension with a salary cap hit of $4.38 million.
Restriction on Paper Loans
When a player is sent down to the minors, they must report every time and play in at least one AHL game before being permitted to be recalled. This effectively eliminates situations where teams would game daily cap accrual or save money by paying players at their AHL level of compensation on days off instead of at the NHL level. This was particularly in place with a player like Nick Robertson two seasons ago, when he was bouncing up and down.
Restriction on a second retention on a traded contract
When the salary cap was flat in 2021, NHL teams began to get creative when it came to trying to get a player’s cap down. Teams like the Leafs would use a third team as a broker to get a player’s cap hit reduced to as much as 25 percent. They first did this when they acquired forward Nick Foligno from the Columbus Blue Jackets. They required the help of the San Jose Sharks to retain an additional 25 percent of Foligno’s $5.5 million cap hit.
Four Recall Amendment
The NHL only allows four non-emergency recalls from the NHL trade deadline to the end of the AHL season. That number will now be modified to five for this season, but only four of those recalls can be on the NHL roster at any time. This has generally not been anything the Leafs were too affected by as most of their recalls toward the end of a season have been emergency recalls. There is also word that pending an agreement with the Canadian Hockey League, an AHL loan of a 19-year-old player will be permitted for one person per team. The Leafs would have likely utilized that last year when prospect Easton Cowan was returned to the London Knights.
A Shift in the Maple Leafs Strategy?
With all the changes the Maple Leafs have undergone this year, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Leafs keep their roster the way it is to start the season. With all the restrictions in LTIR, being a salary-cap accrual team will still help when it comes to roster flexibility. We wrote about this and with many of the LTIR rule changes now going into effect this season, it is by far the most prudent strategy as Toronto navigates under some new accounting rules.
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