Changes To LTIR Will Take Effect For 2025-26, Other CBA Changes Moved Up

A handful of changes outlined in the CBA extension and new Memorandum of Understanding that were ratified over the summer will go into effect earlier than expected. While the full extent of the agreement won’t take effect until the current CBA expires on September 15, 2026, some of the new rules and regulations in the new agreement will have an effect on league operations for 2025-26.

Chief among them is the major overhaul to long-term injured reserve, PuckPedia and Frank Seravalli report. The new playoff salary accounting rules and in-season LTIR relief rules will cover the 2025-26 regular season, not 2026-27 as initially planned.

In the past, teams have routinely benefitted from having a high-priced player on LTIR for either the entire season or a significant portion of it late in the year, allowing them to replace their cap hit before getting the injured player back for the postseason. That allowed teams to ice playoff gameday rosters that had combined cap hits well over the regular-season upper limit.

Now, prior to each playoff game, teams will need to submit their roster of dressed players (not including scratches or injuries) to the league. The combined cap hit of that roster, plus any dead cap space like buyouts or retained salaries, must be at or under the preceding regular season’s upper limit. For players on 35+ contracts, entry-level deals, or other contracts eligible to include performance bonuses, those bonuses will not be incorporated into playoff cap-counting calculations, per PuckPedia.

The only mathematically complex portion of the new playoff cap situation will be regarding players involved in retained salary transactions. From PuckPedia directly:

For the team that retains cap hit, the retention is pro-rated based on the remaining regular-season days at the time of transaction (e.g. if a team retains 25% of a player’s salary in a transaction, the 25% charged to the retaining team is pro-rated. If that retention occurred halfway through the season, the retaining cap would have a playoff cap hit equal to 25%*50%= 12.5% of the full cap hit). Note that the team that receives the retained player does not have their cap hit pro-rated for the portion of the season the player was on their roster.

For in-season LTIR, the changes are simpler. Teams still have the ability to optimize their captures, but the total relief amount that an LTIR pool can hold will now be limited to the previous year’s average salary. For 2025-26, that means teams can only create up to $3,817,293 in flexibility via LTIR, regardless of the total amount of cap hit a team has on LTIR.

There’s one key exception to that rule – if an LTIR-bound player is expected to miss the entire season, the team can still take full advantage of their cap hit. The league needs to approve each scenario, and the LTIR-bound player in question would then be ineligible to play in the postseason regardless of their health.

That means teams like the Golden Knights and Blues, who are expected to use Alex Pietrangelo’s and Torey Krug’s long-term injuries to stay cap-compliant via LTIR placements, won’t be affected by this change since those players are not expected to resume their careers, at least not this season. Meanwhile, the Panthers will now only be able to unlock that $3.82MM in flexibility compared to the $4.5MM they’re currently projected to need with Matthew Tkachuk expected to begin the season on LTIR with a target return date in January.

Here are the other elements of the CBA extension that will now take effect this season, per PuckPedia and Seravalli:

• Contracts with deferred compensation will be outlawed beginning Oct. 7 (the first day of the regular season)
• No more “paper transactions.” When a team assigns a player to the AHL, they must play one game for their respective affiliate before becoming eligible for an NHL recall.
• Double salary retention on a contract can no longer occur simultaneously. A contract can only be involved in a second retained salary transaction 75 regular-season days after the preceding one, eliminating the possibility for three-team trade deadline deals to effectively allow a team to acquire a player at 25% of their initial salary.
• Teams can bypass the NHL-CHL transfer agreement and loan one 19-year-old player to their AHL affiliate who would otherwise be required to stay on the NHL roster or return to juniors.
• The limit of four post-trade deadline standard recalls is expanded to five, although only four of those players can be on the roster simultaneously.
• Teams can no longer implement a dress code for players.
• Players may now endorse wine and spirits.

There will also be a slate of new rules that will take effect for the 2026-27 season but before the new MOU goes into effect on Sep. 16, per PuckPedia. Those are as follows:

• Changes to drafted player rights retention will take effect for the 2026 class (uniform expiry at age 22, regardless of league). Russian players remain exempt and their rights are held indefinitely by the team that drafts them.
• Increases to maximum minor league compensation on entry-level contracts.
• Increases to NHL league minimum salary, which will jump from $775K in 2025-26 to $850K in 2026-27.
• Mandatory neck protection rules begin July 1, 2026.
• Removing additional entry-level restrictions for European players.