Players are only paid six months of the year, during the regular season, but receive additional weeks\u2019 salary if their teams make the playoffs.<\/p>\n
While there are some other small new concessions in the CBA that will help players make ends meet (such as getting access to health benefits in the offseason), to hear ECHLers explain their strike vote, the pay bump was never the driving force. Instead, they were trying to end extreme practices by some ECHL teams that included 20-hour road trips by two-seater buses, games being scheduled at midnight, no days off, ill-fitting helmets and being given used equipment to wear.<\/p>\n
Some of the ECHL\u2019s road trips this season have been particularly grueling, as laid out here previously<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThose type of (travel) things are just unprofessional and that\u2019s something we really honed in on during these negotiations to correct,\u201d said Jimmy Mazza, a six-year ECHL veteran who was part of the Professional Hockey Players\u2019 Association negotiating committee. \u201cI believe with this contract, you\u2019ll see guys stay longer in this league.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t put a dollar value on the health and safety of a player,\u201d added Todd Skirving, a forward with the Kalamazoo Wings. \u201cThat was the most important thing. We just felt like there was no movement on that side of things (in negotiations), so as players we needed to stick together and unite and get that before anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n The ECHL is a league in an odd and evolving position these days. While it\u2019s two rungs below the NHL and far from the limelight, nearly 800 ECHL players<\/a> have made it to hockey\u2019s highest level over the years, including many who are currently playing big roles in the NHL this season.<\/p>\n Bobby McMann, for example, is on the Toronto Maple Leafs\u2019 top line with Auston Matthews right now and was in the ECHL as recently as 2021-22. Justin Brazeau, who has 20 points in 27 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins, played two recent seasons in the ECHL after coming out of junior hockey undrafted. And plenty of goalies have spent full seasons in the ECHL early in their careers to get more starts, including big-name veterans such as Jonathan Quick, Jordan Binnington, Logan Thompson and Philipp Grubauer.<\/p>\n Approximately 25 former ECHL players make the NHL every season on average, going back the past 20 years. It\u2019s not an insignificant number.<\/p>\n But when those future NHLers played in the ECHL, they were teammates with players making as little as $13,500 a season, which has long been the rookie minimum. Many ECHL players take on second (and sometimes third) jobs, especially during the offseason, when they can sometimes earn more doing a desk job or running a hockey camp than they do on the ice throughout the hockey season.<\/p>\n In many ways, the ECHL has become a two-tiered league as it has become younger (with an average age of around 23 years old) and more NHL teams have sent prospects there to develop. This season, for example, there are 52 players on NHL contracts who are playing in the ECHL, which is nearly 8 percent of the league. Another roughly 25 percent of players are on AHL contracts, meaning they earn a far better wage given the AHL minimum salary is $52,725.<\/p>\n ECHL players are provided with a place to live and receive a per diem on the road (which was raised to $60 a day in the new CBA), but even then it can be hard for players to get by on what they\u2019re making. You add in the difficult travel \u2014 including playing three games in three nights, with the third game often played on a Sunday afternoon on little rest \u2014 and many players don\u2019t last long under those conditions.<\/p>\n Part of why the ECHL has become such a young league is players can find better pay and scheduling in European leagues. ECHL rules also limit clubs to playing only four veterans a night.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a massive gap,\u201d Mazza said of what the NHL- and AHL-contracted players are making versus the ECHL players. \u201cYou have some guys in the league trying to make ends meet. They\u2019re coming in around $550 a week, and it\u2019s very difficult for those guys to navigate it. But those guys are helping the development of all those guys above them.\u201d<\/p>\n PHPA executive director Brian Ramsay said his membership is encouraged by the fact that more NHL teams are using the ECHL as a true feeder league \u2014 the way MLB does with its various levels \u2014 including teams like the Penguins\u2019 first-place affiliate in Wheeling, Pa.,<\/a> who are filled with players on AHL deals. It\u2019s possible that if this trend continues, it could improve pay and conditions in the ECHL even more in the years to come.<\/p>\n The league will expand to 32 teams by 2027-28 with new teams in Rio Rancho, N.M., and Augusta, Ga., allowing every NHL club an affiliate.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re seeing that development model happening, unlike in years past,\u201d Ramsay said. \u201cWe want to encourage that more.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Justin Brazeau, who has 12 goals in 27 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins this season, played 75 games in the ECHL. (Charles LeClaire \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n![\"Justin](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/USATSI_27817605-scaled.jpg\")
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