What impact does the NHL/union agreement on long-term contracts have?

A lot has been made of the agreement reached between the NHL and NHLPA over the Kovalchuk contract. The NHL allowed the contract and the union agreed to a number of changes to the collective agreement. Those changes are:

1. While players and clubs can continue to negotiate long-term contracts (five years or longer) that include contract years in a player's 40s, for purposes of salary-cap calculation the contract will effectively be cut off in the year of the contract in which the player turns 41.

2. In any long-term contract that averages more than $5.75 million for the three highest-compensation seasons, the cap charge will be a minimum of $1 million for every season in which the player is 36-39 years of age. That $1 million value will then be used to determine the salary cap hit for the entire contract. If the contract takes the player into his 40s, the previous rule goes into effect.

In addition, the NHL agrees to not investigate or challenge any existing contract. Below are all the long-term contracts and their cap hit. If you were to apply the rule changes to these contracts, it would only impact on Marc Savard, Chris Pronger, Marion Hossa and Roberto Luongo. Not a big concession.

But what it does is stop the trend towards longer and longer contracts. But contracts to age 40 and tailing off to $1 million per season still gives teams lots of room to play with cap. For example, Zetterberg's contract would be perfectly legal under the new rules and his cap hit is just $6 million even though he earns over $7 million in 9 of 12 years.

So don't feel sorry for the NHLPA. They weren't quite taken to the cleaners.

	Cap Hit	Adjusted
Savard	4.00	4.14
Hossa	5.23	6.13
Duncan	5.55	5.55
Zetterberg	6.08	6.08
Franzen	3.95	3.95
Kovalchuk	6.67	6.67
DiPietro	4.50	4.50
Richards	5.75	5.75
Pronger	4.92	6.68
Luongo	5.33	6.70
Ovechkin	9.53	9.53
Backstrom	6.70	6.70