How NHL Lockout Will Change Long-Term Future of Free Agents

December 25th, 2012 by Nicholas Goss Leave a reply »
The impact that the next collective bargaining agreement (CBA) will have on the long-term future of NHL free agents will be substantial.

The changes made to player contract rights, along with the salary cap ceiling decreasing, will change the free-agent landscape over the life of the next agreement in a major way.

If the NHL is able to reach a deal that includes five or six-year term-limits on new contracts and seven or eight-year term-limits on players re-signing with their current team, players will no longer be able to get the long-term security of signing a contract of 10 years or more in length.

The 13-year, $98 million contracts that Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed with the Minnesota Wild on July 4 would no longer exist in the "new era of free agency."

With a lower salary cap ceiling, which could be as low as $60 million in the first full year of the new CBA (2013-13 season), player salaries will go down in the first few years of the agreement.

Teams will have less money to spend on player salaries, which means a lot of the players who aren't top-tier stars will likely receive a lot less on the free-agent market than th ...

Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NHL
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