NHL Odds: Salary cap will come into effect for upcoming 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs

Say goodbye to the long-term injured reserve argument.

The NHL and NHL Players Association have agreed to implement a few parts of the new CBA a season early. The biggest immediate change involves a playoff salary cap, which will be in place for the upcoming 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The current CBA doesn’t go into effect until after this season, but the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to a rolling enactment of some of the new rules.

Let’s sees how this could impact teams around the league.

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Playoff salary cap

The new playoff salary cap requires teams to dress a lineup of players whose combined salaries do not exceed the cap for each playoff game. Players who are injured or healthy scratches don’t count against the playoff cap.

Previously, the salary cap didn’t apply in the playoffs. This gave teams the opportunity to get creative and stash players on LTIR, which doesn’t count their contract against the cap, until Game 1 of the playoffs when the cap no longer applied.

Essentially, teams were suspected of keeping players out of the lineup until the playoffs, even if they were ready to return during the regular season.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers are a perfect example. Florida stashed Matthew Tkachuk’s $9.5 million cap hit on LTIR for the last part of the regular season, freeing up enough cap space to add Brad Marchand and Seth Jones to the roster.

Tampa Bay was also accused of doing this when they won the Stanley Cup in 2021. Nikita Kucherov missed every regular season game, only to return for Game 1 of the playoffs and lead the postseason in scoring. The team was $18 million over that season’s cap.

Clearly, this will be a pretty seismic change for the NHL.