By a guy who’s seen too much hockey, eaten too many arena nachos, and still believes in fair fights.
Some rules come from the top down. Bureaucrats in suits, convinced they’ve outsmarted the game. Others come from lived experience—the kind you earn when you’ve seen one too many playoff teams buy their way past the cap with a third team wearing the face of Arizona.
This new one? It’s a little of both.
Starting in 2026–27, NHL teams who retain salary in a trade can no longer pass it along like a half-smoked cigarette outside a dive bar five minutes before the trade deadline. There’s a 75-day waiting period before a contract with retained salary can be flipped again.
On the surface, it’s boring. But scratch the surface, and what you find is something real: the League finally tightening the noose around one of its dirtiest little open secrets—cap laundering.
The Old Hustle
You know the type. The contender with no cap space and a desperate need for grit, experience, or one last center with faceoff wins in his blood. Enter: Team C. A third party with no dog in the fight but plenty of cap room and a sweet tooth for 5th-round picks.
For years, teams like San Jose, Arizona, Detroit—franchises stuck in the rebuild purgatory—offered up their cap space for rent. Like hotel rooms, just less clean and far more expensive.
Tampa Bay got David Savard this way. Toronto landed Nick Foligno. Vegas, always up against it, once used three teams to sneak a player into their roster like a stowaway.
It was legal. It was clever. And it was a little greasy.
The New Reality
With the 75-day rule, that easy backdoor is now bolted shut. You want to retain salary? Fine. But commit. You don’t get to flip it again tomorrow like you’re running a used car lot.
And make no mistake—this isn’t just bookkeeping. It’s a shift in the power dynamics of the league.
Deadline day will be different. The smell of desperation won’t be quite so thick. The last-minute miracle trades, the cap acrobatics? Fewer of them. Maybe that’s good. Maybe it just means GMs will need to start making their moves in December instead of waiting for the final buzzer.
Why It Matters
This rule wasn’t about punishing the savvy. It was about protecting the soul of the game. About making sure the teams that win in April aren’t the ones who cut the best cap deal in February.
It’s about making things harder for the paper champions. The ones who’ve mastered loopholes but forgotten how to play the long game.
Hockey, at its core, is a game of attrition. Of pain, luck, and second efforts. Of traveling through Winnipeg in January and still showing up ready to bleed for the guy next to you.
This rule, minor as it seems, nudges the sport a little closer back to that spirit.
But Let’s Be Honest
Some team will find a new trick. They always do. The NHL is a cathedral of tradition built on a foundation of clever workarounds and dark magic. From LTIR resurrection acts to tax haven teams, the grift will evolve.
But for now, let’s acknowledge the rarest of things: a rule change that didn’t come from a think tank, but from watching the game lose just enough of its soul to make you pause.
Final Bite
Hockey is supposed to be beautiful in its brutality. Honest in its outcomes. And if we’re lucky, just chaotic enough to remind us why we fell in love in the first place.
This new rule won’t fix everything. But it cuts the right way.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
Sponsored by www.avsfam.com