NHL players preparing for labour uncertainty with lockout-protected contracts

The NHL’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement is set to expire at the end of the 2025-26 regular season. And though the NHL has been in a period of meaningful labour peace since the shortened 2012-13 season, there are early signs the league and Players’ Association may be preparing for a fight.

Unlike some of the other North American sports leagues, the NHL’s rebound from the “COVID years” has been materially slower from a revenue perspective.

The slowdown in year-over-year growth can be attributable to many things beyond the pandemic, though: Canadian macroeconomics,  increased competition in the North American sports landscape, challenges with broadcast rightsholders in the United States, and even a de facto forced relocation are just a sample of the financial obstacles facing the league. Those obstacles have created fiscal headwinds, and it’s why you have seen the salary cap ceiling struggling to grow year over year.

Each of those issues necessitates its own course of action, and some of these challenges just require time to solve.

The relocation of the Arizona Coyotes is a good example. What was largely an anchor tied around the neck of the NHL for more than a decade could become a revenue tailwind in Utah. And while slowed growth is of concern, the NHL is still a lucrative business that captivates a wide audience – just last season, the league set a new attendance record.

Rest assured, there will be a fight of some kind over the apportionment and sharing of hockey-related revenues between the parties. The only question fans ultimately care about: Will those negotiations have an adverse impact to a future regular season, as it has routinely in past negotiations?

One thing that’s certain is that the players are preparing this time around. The canary in the coal mine remains signing bonuses. We talk about signing bonuses frequently in the context of the challenges they pose for components of roster-building like buyouts, which are calculated excluding remaining signing bonus money owed. It’s why you colloquially hear contracts soaked in signing-bonus money are buyout proof in nature.

Contracts loaded with signing bonuses offer one other element: they can be lockout proof. Since signing bonuses are typically paid in the off-season during the summer months, they precede whatever impact a CBA stalemate may have on the approaching regular season. If a regular season is disrupted without a contract in place, player salaries are effectively frozen.

To illustrate this, consider just the contracts signed since the beginning of the calendar year. Notably, the multi-year contracts with term extending into the 2026-27 regular season have a sharp rise in signing bonus activity at the moment the league’s contract expires:

Players signing multi-year deals right now typically have more bargaining power than your true depth forwards and defenders who bounce around the league. This is one of several ways they can negotiate favourable terms, and NHL front offices – often caught in the middle of labour disputes between league ownership and players – are willing to comply, especially if it means they can squeeze out an extra year of term for the player, or reduce a player’s cap hit in the process.

What you get is a meaningful shift in contract structure, and this is a trend I anticipate will accelerate over the next year as more contracts carry through the 2026-27 regular season.

And remember: every player paid through a signing bonus is one less player financially impacted by a lockout, the most commonly utilized pressure point in past labour negotiations.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, PuckPedia, Hockey Reference