How will the new playoff salary cap affect the NHL Trade Deadline?
The Florida Panthers ran a clinic at the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline. It wasn’t just the high-impact acquisitions they made, acquiring defenseman Seth Jones and Brad Marchand. It was also the salary-cap tap dance executed by GM Bill Zito, taking on $7 million of Jones’ cap hit from the Chicago Blackhawks and $3.06 million of Brad Marchand’s cap hit from the Boston Bruins. The deals were feasible because superstar right winger Matthew Tkachuk, nursing a groin injury sustained at the 4 Nations Face-Off, was stashed on long-term injured reserve. He returned just in time for Game 1 of the postseason when his AAV no longer counted against the cap, and the Panthers hoisted the Cup two months later with a lineup that would’ve been $5 million north of the cap had compliance been enforced.
Hey, no shade. The Panthers weren’t the first franchise to milk the LTIR loophole. The 2022-23 Vegas Golden Knights did so with Mark Stone, as did the 2020-21 Tampa Bay Lightning with Nikita Kucherov. But no more. A change in the NHL and NHL Players’ Association’s new collective bargaining agreement, fast-tracked for activation in the final year of the current CBA, states that teams must now be cap compliant for the postseason – not their entire rosters but their starting lineups for every game. By the earlier of 3:00 p.m. local time or five hours before a game, teams will submit their 18 skaters and two goalies, which must combine for an averaged club salary that doesn’t exceed the cap, with dead-cap charges also factored in. PuckPedia lays the playoff cap rules out in detail here.
With all the playoff hopefuls now needing to ensure cap compliance – not to mention the elimination of double-salary retention on trades within 75 days, another expedited rule from the new CBA – will we see more conservative behavior from GMs approaching the deadline?
Daily Faceoff spoke to some current GMs and team executives around the NHL to take the temperature. Interestingly, the opinions were not uniform.
One of school of thought? Cap compliance will tighten up trading. If you look at team like the Panthers: this season, instead of Tkachuk on LTIR, it’s captain Aleskander Barkov, and they must make sure they leave room for his $10-million AAV if and when he returns from his torn ACL and MCL in time for the postseason, assuming they can make the big dance at all this year. As one GM put it, the change in the environment is mostly heralded around the league because it levels the playing field. It won’t be nearly as easy to add an upgrade without moving out an impact player’s AAV to balance the ledger.
“The changes could make for a quieter, more cautious deadline,” said an NHL team executive. “Teams need real cap space now, not just deadline space. Players with lower AAVs might be more enticing now.”
The players on bargain-level cap hits relative to their production could increase in value to the point they command larger returns. Think Toronto Maple Leafs left winger Bobby McMann at $1.35 million, Nashville Predators center Ryan O’Reilly at $4.5 million or Winnipeg Jets defenseman Logan Stanley at $1.25 million.
The conflicting philosophy: the rising cap matters much more than the playoff cap. The jump from $88 million last season to $95.5 million this season alone makes up for nixing the LTIR loophole, and when you factor in the projected jump to $104 million next season, it’s even easier to execute “luxury rental” trades involving players with term left.
“I don’t believe it will have a major impact on deadline moves,” said another NHL GM. “There are so many teams in the mix that have cap room – if they wish to make moves they will be able to.”
The latter theory is supported thus far in the multiple major trades we’ve seen this season. The Minnesota Wild took on defensemen Quinn Hughes’ $7.85 million without retention in December, albeit Marco Rossi’s $5 million went the other way; the Los Angeles Kings were able to stomach 50 percent of left winger Artemi Panarin’s cap hit at $5.82 million earlier this month.
But will those deals go down as exceptions? Another GM told Daily Faceoff he expects fewer trades in the next couple weeks but less because of the playoff cap rule and more because double salary retention is out.
“We won’t get as many transactions because we won’t see teams washing money using another team [as a third-party broker] the way we did in the past,” the GM said.
Perhaps if anything holds GMs back from major moves in the next week and a half, it will be the league-wide parity. As another GM told Daily Faceoff, “The biggest question regarding the deadline is who will be sellers or buyers…due to the compacted standings.” The Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and New York Rangers have established themselves as clear sellers, but the rest of the league remains wide open, with 23 teams in playoff spots or within six points of one.
With all the unprecedented factors in play, then, we can expect one of the least predictable trade seasons in recent memory over the next 10 days.
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The 2026 Trade Deadline Special is going LIVE March 6th. Join the Daily Faceoff crew on Friday, March 6th, from 11 AM-3:30 PM ET for wall-to-wall coverage of every single move as it happens. Get instant reaction, expert analysis, and exclusive insights from special guests throughout the day. Tune in LIVE on the Daily Faceoff YouTube channel and don’t miss a second of deadline day chaos.
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