LOS ANGELES — The NHL and NHL Players’ Association are on the verge of unprecedented labor peace that will provide jet fuel for hockey’s growth over the next half decade. Sources indicate the NHL and NHLPA are putting the final touches on a Memorandum of Understanding for a four-year extension to their Collective Bargaining Agreement, the framework of which could be announced as soon as Friday ahead of the Draft.
The MOU must be signed by both parties ahead of a Friday announcement, but they were closing in on a handshake agreement on Wednesday with one outstanding issue pending. A formal ratification process would follow.
Ratification won’t be an issue. Though there was no vote taken, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman provided his Board of Governors with an extensive update on negotiations here on Wednesday, while concurrently in Las Vegas the NHLPA’s executive board was apprised of the details and unanimously gave executive director Marty Walsh the green light to agree to terms.
The four-year extension would kick in on Sept. 16, 2026 and carry through Sept. 15, 2030. With one more year remaining on this current CBA, that would provide five total years of continuity for a league with three previous work stoppages on record. This is the earliest the NHL and NHLPA will have concluded an extension prior to expiration in Bettman’s 32-year run as commissioner.
Here are some pertinent details of the agreement, according to both league and union sources:
The two sides have gone back and forth drafting language for the MOU for weeks in preparation for a potential Friday announcement. Once ratified, the NHL and NHLPA would then embark on a longer process to paper the CBA into a more formal document, which could prove a little tricky. When the CBA was extended in 2020 during the pandemic, the two sides have since been playing on the terms of that MOU. Now, they will need to blend that MOU with the skeleton of the last full version CBA from 2013 – and also with the new agreement for 2026-30. But that’s all academic.
It’s difficult to overstate how significant this extension is for league business and the overall health of the game. Since Walsh, then the sitting U.S. Secretary of Labor, was appointed head of the player’s union in 2023, the NHL and NHLPA both boasted that this is the least contentious and most constructive relationship between the two sides in decades. With a new CBA hammered out and the NHL and NHLPA jointly charging past $7 billion in annual revenue, they just proved that isn’t a nicety but the genuine article as they march on together in lockstep.
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