NHL’s dizzying calendar crunch leaves teams no room to breathe

It is going to be the same kind of late June crunch schedule next year, too, with the Four Nations tournament coming up in February, the regular season ending April 17, at least two weeks too late. It will be the same in 2025-26 when the NHL returns to the Olympic Games in Milan.

There will be no time to breathe between the Cup Final and the draft, then no time to breathe between the draft and free agency. The compressed schedule has as much to do with cost as the elimination of the centralized draft. Well, almost as much. Well, it’s a factor, at least.

There will be an opportunity for the league and the NHLPA to address the critical date schedule during the next round of collective bargaining that’s not all that far removed, with the current CBA due to expire Sept. 15, 2026. Two more years.

If the draft — in whatever form it is held — annually presses up against the end of June, there is no reason for free agency to open on July 1. Deals are done, miraculously and supernaturally, within seconds of the opening bell. Riches would not be lost if free agency were pushed back to July 5. Not a single player would be inconvenienced by the switch.

It would give folks time to breathe. The first-overall pick morphed into the first free-agency signing in a matter of hours. The draft was overshadowed by the specter of the open market. An additional four days would allow for more attention to be devoted to prospects in addition to providing more of a ramp-up to free agency.

Here’s one. It is absurd that the length of the Cup Final determines when the league’s first buyout window opens. As currently written, buyouts begin June 15, or 48 hours after the Final ends, whichever is later. The date matters because buyouts are set at one-third for players under the age of 26 and two-thirds for 26-and-over.

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Millions of dollars can be at stake, as they were when the Kings were ruminating about Pierre-Luc Dubois, who had seven years at $47 million remaining on his contract at the end of his first season in Los Angeles. Dubois was set to turn 26 on June 24.

Had the Final ended June 21 or earlier, the Kings could have bought out Dubois for approximately $15.833 million, per PuckPedia. That would have been the number had the Panthers closed out the Oilers in either Games 5 or 6.

But when Edmonton extended the series to Game 7 on June 24, Dubois would have had another 15.8 million reasons to celebrate his birthday, for had he not been traded to the Capitals five days earlier, the buyout price would have doubled.

Who thinks that makes any sense?

Even when age is fixed by the league to a designated date, the calendar can have unintended consequences, but it is not completely arbitrary. This buyout rule is crazy. Half of the league is done by mid-April and another eight are done by the end of the month.

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Why does everyone have to wait? There is no rule prohibiting teams from making trades during the playoffs — Dubois was traded for Darcy Kuemper during the Final — so clubs should be allowed to conduct their own business on their own individual calendars.

Teams should be allowed to buy out players starting 48 hours after their respective final games, either of the regular season or playoffs. Age and the buyout formula should be designated by a fixed date so that millions aren’t at stake by the vagaries of the calendar … or whether which team wins Game 6.

Wait a second.

The Senators traded a first-rounder and two seconds to the Coyotes for Jakob Chychrun on March 1, 2023, and 16 months later — July 1, 2024 — they traded Chychrun to the Caps for a third-rounder and Nick Jensen, and with cleverness like this, I cannot imagine how Ottawa has missed the playoffs seven straight seasons, can you?

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Honor system, please, but I am wagering that you have no idea with which team Jarome Iginla ended his career.

Who would you have rather had on your team? Jeremy Roenick or Keith Tkachuk? Who would you rather have had? Roenick or Rick Tocchet?

And yet Roenick is the one headed to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Finally, Jim Dolan might want to encourage Jalen Brunson to give Igor Shesterkin a call .

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