The NHL and NHL Players’ Association have reportedly agreed to a “rolling implementation” of collective bargaining agreement changes that will lead to a postseason salary cap as soon as the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs, TSN’s Frank Seravalli reported Tuesday.
The new rules will introduce a salary cap for each playoff roster, limiting teams’ ability to take advantage of late-season long-term injured reserve designations by acquiring new players.
The new CBA was previously set to take effect at the beginning of the 2026-27 season. Other changes that will come into effect early include the relaxation of player dress code rules, which will be instituted immediately, per Seravalli.
Another immediate change is that players can begin endorsing alcoholic products, which was banned under the previous CBA, per Seravalli.
Most impactful will be the playoff cap changes, which will immediately change how teams begin preparing for the 2025-26 season.
The Chicago Blackhawks were the first championship team who benefitted from the previous LTIR and cap rules in 2015, when the franchise acquired new players at the trade deadline using the salary cap space left available by Patrick Kane’s placement on injured reserve.
The Blackhawks then brought Kane back during the postseason, when his salary wouldn’t count against the cap, to join with his team’s deadline acquisitions and win the 2015 Stanley Cup.
Holding injured players’ salary on LTIR until the playoffs, then bringing back the injured player when salary cap rules relax during the postseason, has since become a regular practice for championship teams including the Vegas Golden Knights, Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida Panthers.
Nikita Kucherov wore a shirt that read “$18 million over the cap,” the amount by which the Lightning exceeded regular-season salary limitations after bringing him back from LTIR during the 2021 postseason, when celebrating his team’s Cup win in 2021.
Teams will no longer have quite that much space to add salary following the implementation of the playoff salary cap.
There is still some flexibility in the new postseason salary rules. The cap applies only to the 20 players in the lineup, and rosters can be changed from game to game, Seravalli previously reported.
Teams will meanwhile not receive as much wiggle room from placing players on LTIR, which previously relieved the team of the entirety of the players’ cap hit.
Clubs will only be able to receive the league’s annual average salary in LTIR relief going forward. That total came out to just over $3.8 million last season, per PuckPedia.
The Panthers would have been $5 million over the playoff cap last summer had these new rules been in effect during the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, PuckPedia reported.
Despite the rolling implementation of the new CBA, Sept. 15 of next year still remains a major deadline for the league. Any player contracts signed between now and that date will be subject to the rules of the previous CBA, while any deals inked afterward will be part of the new deal, per Seravalli.