Playoff Salary Cap
Starting with the 2025-26 season, the NHL will implement a playoff salary cap for the first time. Under this new rule, each team’s dressed playoff lineup must fit under the same salary cap used during the regular season.
The playoff cap will be calculated on a game-by-game basis, using the projected 20-player lineup for the upcoming game, plus any applicable dead-cap charges. Players who are scratched or on injured reserve do not count towards the playoff cap. Teams must submit their 20-player roster before each playoff game no later than 3pm local time, or 5 hours before the game (whichever comes first).
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.
Example
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 $5,038,282 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 |
