NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman chat at the 2024 NHL All-Star … [+] weekend. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
For more than three decades, NHL fans have grown accustomed to acrimonious labor negotiations, followed by multiple work stoppages.
So, with two years remaining until the league’s current collective bargaining agreement is set to expire on Sept. 15, 2026, the concern level is naturally beginning to rise.
But when he spoke to the media after the league’s board of governors meeting in New York on Tuesday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman painted a rosy picture of the negotiating road ahead. He projected that the two sides would get down to business shortly after the new year and, “I don’t want to speculate, but if we have it done by my media avail in the Stanley Cup Final, everyone would be very happy,” he said.
Bettman then clarified that he and his NHL Players’ Association counterpart, executive director Marty Walsh, had not yet discussed a negotiating timeline or agenda. “It’ll be what it’ll be,” he said. “But I think, based on the status of our relationship, this will be fine.”
Most parties in a negotiation believe that their positions are reasonable enough — before the two sides start laying out their demands. But since taking on the role of commissioner on Feb. 1, 1993, Bettman has sounded warning bells during past labor talks. Lockouts have followed.
In 1994, the league shut down for more than three months before an agreement was reached that allowed for a shortened 48-game schedule before playoffs. While the owners were looking to curtail rapidly rising player salaries, they ultimately settled for minor concessions including a rookie salary cap and changes to the arbitration process. At that time, the players skirted the threat of a luxury tax or salary cap.
The new CBA originally covered a six-year term, which was ultimately extended to 10 years. But its expiry brought the mother of all lockouts, when the owners dug in on their demands for a hard-cap system. The full 2004-05 season was lost before the players capitulated, and the same system remains in place today.
Under that deal, the players received 57 percent of hockey-related revenue. By the time it expired seven years later, the owners were demanding a 50/50 split. They got their wish in a new 10-year deal signed in January of 2013, leading to another shortened 48-game season following a lockout of more than three months.
That agreement was set to run through 2022. But the disruption caused by COVID-19 led the league and the NHLPA’s then-executive director, Don Fehr, to hammer out a memorandum of understanding in July of 2020 addressed that summer’s return-to-play plan for the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs as well as the unique financial circumstances caused by the pandemic.
At the same time, the term of the CBA was extended by four years, to 2026. And two years out, the league looks healthier than ever.
After overseeing a $4.5 million rise in the salary cap for the 2024-25 season, Bettman offered a very preliminary projection of a similar increase for 2025-26, to something in the neighbourhood of $92.5 million.
Rather than carve out additional gains from the other side’s piece of the pie, both the league and the players’ association, under Walsh, have focused on expanding the size of the pie itself.
Post-pandemic, franchise values have been soaring across the sports world. The NHL is no exception. After Ryan Smyth paid $1.2 billion to acquire the hockey assets of the beleaguered Arizona Coyotes and start a team in Utah last April, two other transactions have moved the needle even farther.
On Tuesday, the board approved a 54 percent acquisition of the Tampa Bay Lightning by a group headed by Blue Owl Capital co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Mark Lipschultz at a valuation of $1.8 billion. In 2010, current owner Jeff Vinik purchased the Lightning for a reported $170 million. The team was valued at $1.25 billion by Forbes in December of 2023.
It’s harder to glean a specific valuation of the Toronto Maple Leafs from the mid-September sale of 37.5 percent of the assets of the club’s parent company, Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, to Rogers, for $3.5 billion.
That puts the valuation of MLSE, with assets that also include the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, MLS side Toronto FC, the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts and Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, at $9.2 billion. Forbes named the Maple Leafs as the NHL’s most valuable team in 2023, at a valuation of $2.8 billion, and the Raptors were valued at $4.1 billion.
At All-Star weekend in Toronto last February, the cooperative spirit between Bettman and the Walsh-led players’ assocation was on display when it was announced that NHL players would return to the Olympics in 2026 for the first time since 2014. Next February’s league-run ‘4 Nations Face-Off’ will serve as a teaser while also generating income that will be funnelled directly into hockey-related revenue.
If that event runs smoothly and the two sides continue to work well together on finding ways to boost other revenue streams, that could indeed set the stage to have a CBA extension in place well before the deadline in September of 2026.
