NHL Considers Extending Regular Season to 84 Games
Amidst collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations, the National Hockey League (NHL) and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) are discussing the possibility of increasing the regular season to 84 games. This was reported by sources close to the conversations.This increase, which would exceed the current 82 games, has been a topic of internal debate in the NHL for the past few seasons. The league has been evaluating scheduling alternatives, especially after some franchises expressed concern about the imbalance in the number of divisional games against rivals, encounters that usually attract more public and larger television audiences.
The addition of two games to the regular season would allow the NHL to maintain its current format, which ensures that each team visits each opponent at least once and that divisional rivals face each other four times per season. However, other modifications to the format have also been discussed. The NHL is expected to reduce the number of preseason games to compensate for the two additional regular season games. A source revealed that there is some concern among players about the “wear and tear” that two additional games could generate. The current collective bargaining agreement expires on September 15, 2026. The NHL already had an 84-game regular season between 1992 and 1994, when the league and the NHLPA agreed to add two games at “neutral sites” to each team’s schedule. The expansion of the regular season is one of several topics being negotiated in CBA talks. These include a solution for the use of the long-term injury salary cap exemption that some teams use at the end of the regular season, only to reincorporate those players into their lineups at the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs. A possible solution: that the lineups that play in the playoffs must comply with the salary cap, although the entire roster can still exceed the salary cap in the postseason. The NHL and the NHLPA have been close to reaching an agreement on a new CBA for the past few weeks. Multiple reports indicated that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman gave an extensive review of the talks at Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting in Los Angeles, but there was no vote to ratify it.We started a little later than we had anticipated for several reasons on both sides, so I don’t have an announcement to make today that we have an agreement. We have more than a year ahead of us, and I think we are in a very good place in terms of our relationship.
Gary Bettman
