The recently agreed CBA extension and MOU (April 2020) includes provisions suggesting a flat salary cap for years to come, and as a result, general managers and players have experienced an unprecedented draft, free agency and arbitration marketplace this fall. NHL league activity is expected to continue under a particularly unique context caused by loss of hockey related revenue from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the upcoming Seattle expansion draft.

Under this challenging and uncertain financial landscape, I endeavored to conduct contract research to better identify league-wide contract negotiation trends and evaluate anticipated flexibility of NHL team’s salary cap structures by looking at:
– No-trade clauses
– Signing bonuses (S.B.)
– Injury reserve (IR) and long term injury reserve (LTIR)

Previous Contract Analysis Work

Having started my journey in analytics with the opportunity to grow as part of the inaugural hockey-graphs mentorship program, it is a privilege to take this opportunity to build on the inspiring contract negotiation and player valuation work of Matt Cane (The Time Value of Money and Player Valuation), Mike Zsolt (The Financial Frontier: Defining characteristics of competitive salary cap management), Josh and Luke Younggren (Projecting NHL Skater Contracts for the 2019 Offseason), and Shayna Goldman (ISOLHAC: How can we better our contract analysis), amongst other distinguished leaders in the analytics community.