There’s a real money case for getting ahead of the NHL’s next Collective Bargaining Agreement, and the biggest winners are the players who can lock in extensions before Sept. 16, 2026.
Once the new CBA kicks in, the league’s contract rules get tighter in ways that matter most for front-loaded deals. The maximum term drops by one year - from eight to seven years for a team’s own players and from seven to six years for free agents - and the league is also dialing back some of the tricks that let players collect more cash earlier in a deal.
Under the current setup, a contract can be heavily stacked toward the front end. In the new agreement, that flexibility shrinks.
The amount paid in an adjacent year can no longer exceed 20% of the first year’s pay, down from 25%. The lowest-to-highest yearly pay ratio is also changing, moving from a minimum of 60% to 71%.
And signing bonuses will be capped at 60% of the full contract, whereas now they can make up essentially the whole deal aside from the league minimum salary.
That matters because signing bonuses are usually paid on July 1, while salary is spread out twice a month during the regular season. In other words, the structure of the deal changes when the money lands in a player’s hands.
The difference shows up clearly in a sample five-year, $20 million AAV contract. Under the current CBA, the most front-loaded version can shove $95.3 million of the $100 million total into signing bonuses, with just $4.7 million in salary across the deal. Under the future CBA, that same contract can only carry $60 million in signing bonuses, with $40 million in salary.
The gap doesn’t look huge on paper in every case, but it adds up. Using a model that assumes money is invested at a 10% return compounded monthly, the net value of a maximally front-loaded deal is higher under the current CBA across every term from three to eight years.
The difference is smallest on a three-year, $20 million AAV deal at $365,000, or 0.49%. It grows from there: $2.45 million on a four-year deal, $3.38 million on a five-year deal, $5.02 million on a six-year deal, $5.57 million on a seven-year deal, and $6.83 million on an eight-year deal.
So who should care most?
Restricted free agents coming off entry-level deals should move before the new CBA arrives. They don’t have arbitration rights and aren’t eligible for qualifying offers, which makes waiting a losing play. That group includes high-profile names such as Cutter Gauthier, Simon Edvinsson, Collin Graf, and Alexander Nikishin, along with Connor Bedard and Leo Carlsson, who are expected to sign front-loaded, bonus-heavy extensions before Sept. 16th.
For an unrestricted free agent signing what is likely the final contract of a career, the logic is similar: take the most money available under the current rules and do it now.
But for RFAs like Zeev Buium or UFAs like Quinn Hughes, who have just entered the final year of their deals and can already sign extensions, the urgency is much lower. The salary cap is set to rise by 9.1%, from $104 million to $113.5 million, and that increase is bigger than the financial edge gained by signing before the new CBA. In that case, waiting until next year may actually make more sense, even if the extension ends up being a slightly smaller slice of the cap.
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