NHL News
Upcoming Playoff Cap & Changes to Long-Term Injury Reserve (LTIR)
Image © David Kirouac-Imagn Images
The NHL and NHLPA have ratified a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), set to take effect on September 16, 2026. This agreement introduces significant changes to Long-Term Injured Reserve rules, impacting both regular-season and playoff salary cap management.
Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR)
LTIR, first introduced in the 2005 CBA, allows teams to exceed the salary cap ceiling when replacing injured players. The system first drew major criticism in 2015 when Chicago’s Patrick Kane fractured his collarbone and missed the final 21 games of the regular season. The Blackhawks used the LTIR space created by Kane’s injury to bolster their roster, including the acquisition of Antoine Vermette. With no salary cap in the playoffs, Kane was able to return for the first game of the playoffs without the team needing to create cap room before activating him off of LTIR. Since then, teams like Tampa Bay (Nikita Kucherov), Vegas (Mark Stone), and Florida (Matthew Tkachuk) have similarly used LTIR to manage playoff rosters en route to Stanley Cup championships.
Click here for a high-level overview of the existing LTIR system.
Click here for additional LTIR information and examples for how the LTIR pool is set.
The new Memorandum of Understanding implements two key adjustments to address LTIR benefits:
New Regular-Season LTIR Relief Rules
Teams placing a player on LTIR can still increase their salary cap pool by the injured player’s cap hit. However, for players expected to return during the same season or playoffs, LTIR relief is now limited to the previous season’s average league salary. The league’s average salary in 2024-25 was $3,817,293, meaning that LTIR relief for any player with a higher cap hit would be limited to $3,817,283 had the rules been in effect for the 2025-26 season. Under the previous rules, a team could receive LTIR relief by up to the injured player's cap hit, without a maximum. Players declared unfit for the remainder of both the regular season and playoffs are eligible for full LTIR relief but cannot return until the next season.
New Playoff Salary Accounting Rules
For each playoff game, the total cap hit of the dressed players must be under the cap ceiling for that season. Playoff cap calculations follow these rules:
- Performance and Games Played bonuses are excluded from a player’s playoff cap hit.
- Player cap hits are not pro-rated (i.e. the player’s full-season cap hit is used, even if they were acquired or called up mid-season).
- Acquired players’ cap hits net of retention count fully (without pro-ration) against the playoff cap (e.g., if 25% salary is retained by the original team, 75% fully counts against the acquiring team’s playoff cap, even if they were acquired mid-season).
- Dead cap space (e.g. buried contracts, buyouts, cap recapture penalties, and retained salaries) that were incurred during the season counts toward the playoff cap. This means that if a player had a buried cap hit for part of the season, the accumulated cap hit charged during the season counts as a playoff cap hit regardless of if that player plays or is even still on the team. For example, Spencer Knight had a buried cap hit of $3.35M on the first day of the regular season for Florida in 24-25. This means that Florida would have a playoff cap hit of $17K for that, even though he was traded and no longer on the roster.
- 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.
Below shows the new playoff accounting rules applied to last playoff game in 2025, Game 6 of the 2025 Stanley Cup Final. The Salary Cap in 2024-25 was $88M, meaning that the Edmonton Oilers would have been $7,353,277 below the Playoff Cap in Game 6 had it been in effect, while the Florida Panthers would have been $7,353,277 above the Playoff Cap.
Edmonton Oilers Cup Final Lineup (Game 6)
Player | '24-'25 Cap Hit |
Mattias Janmark | $1,450,000 |
Adam Henrique | $3,000,000 |
Trent Frederic | $575,000 |
Connor Brown | $1,000,000 |
Leon Draisaitl | $8,500,000 |
Kasperi Kapanen | $1,000,000 |
Jeff Skinner | $3,000,000 |
Corey Perry | $1,150,000 |
Evander Kane | $5,125,000 |
Vasily Podkolzin | $1,000,000 |
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins | $5,125,000 |
Connor McDavid | $12,500,000 |
Evan Bouchard | $3,900,000 |
Mattias Ekholm | $6,000,000 |
Darnell Nurse | $9,250,000 |
Brett Kulak | $2,750,000 |
John Klingberg | $1,755,056 |
Jake Walman | $3,400,000 |
Calvin Pickard | $1,000,000 |
Stuart Skinner | $2,600,000 |
On-Ice Cap Hit | $74,080,056 |
Buyouts | $3,016,667 |
Overage | $3,550,000 |
Total Playoff Cap Hit per new CBA | $80,646,723 |
Florida Panthers Cup Final Lineup (Game 6)
Player | '24-'25 Cap Hit |
Sam Bennett | $4,425,000 |
AJ Greer | $850,000 |
Jonah Gadjovich | $775,000 |
Sam Reinhart | $8,625,000 |
Anton Lundell | $5,000,000 |
Alexander Barkov | $10,000,000 |
Evan Rodrigues | $3,000,000 |
Matthew Tkachuk | $9,500,000 |
Carter Verhaeghe | $4,166,667 |
Eetu Luostarinen | $3,000,000 |
Brad Marchand | $3,062,500 |
Tomas Nosek | $775,000 |
Seth Jones | $7,000,000 |
Aaron Ekblad | $7,500,000 |
Dimitry Kulikov | $1,150,000 |
Gustav Forsling | $5,750,000 |
Niko Mikkola | $2,500,000 |
Nate Schmidt | $800,000 |
Vitek Vanecek | $3,400,000 |
Sergei Bobrovsky | $10,000,000 |
On-Ice Cap Hit | $91,279,167 |
Buyouts | $1,241,667 |
Overage | $500,000 |
Buried Cap Hit | $17,448 |
Total Playoff Cap Hit per new CBA | $93,038,282 |
These rules are expected to be in effect for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 seasons, after which either the league or the PA can reopen negotiations for these rules.
