NHL CBA establishes a $4M annual fund for retired players' health care and wellness

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Beyond the noticeable changes in the new NHL collective bargaining agreement like expanding the regular season to 84 games and implementing a playoff salary cap is an investment in caring for former players that has not existed until now.

The league and union will contribute $4 million annually to the newly established Retired Players Emergency Healthcare and Wellness Fund. NHL Alumni Association president and executive director Glenn Healy, a retired goaltender, said the plan provides access to a family doctor and a mental wellness professional for any player, “whether you played one shift or 10,000 games.”

Healy, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey shared details about the plan Tuesday for a small group of reporters attending the league's annual preseason player media tour.

“Our wellness plan is not like basketball,” Healy said. “It’s not like football. We’re different in this sport. We don’t have our teeth. We have different issues, and this is I think a real step forward for the players. This is groundbreaking. This is Christmas Day for us.”

The CBA, which runs through 2030, also increases the insurance subsidy retired players are eligible for to $10,000 a year.

“This is just another additional thing we can do for our current and former players,” said Hainsey, who played over 1,000 games from 2002-20. “The idea is when our players do leave the game here, in the future, that they’re in a totally different situation for their post-career lives.”

Healy, a Stanley Cup champion with the New York Rangers in 1994, has been pushing to fill this gap for some time and met with Marty Walsh about it when he took over running the union in 2023. Walsh at the time said alumni well-being was high on the list of things the NHLPA wanted to focus on, and this is evidence of the league joining in on that effort.

“We certainly recognize at the league the importance of our history and the men who made that history and formed that foundation for the success we’re having today, so we’re very appreciative of that,” Daly said. “Obviously, our work with the Alumni Association has grown in leaps and bounds over the years.”

St. Louis forward Robert Thomas, the Blues' alternate player representative, when asked his favorite parts of the new CBA, mentioned not the elimination of team dress codes or fitness testing but pensions and health benefits for alumni.

“There’s so many guys that did so much for the league and the players in the past,” Thomas said. “Trying to continue to make that a No. 1 priority moving forward is something that a lot of players feel really good about.”

In the aftermath of a judge in Ontario finding five members of Canada's 2018 world junior team not guilty in their sexual assault trial, their status remains unclear with less than a month to go before the start of the season.

The judge found in late July that the prosecution could not meet the onus of proof for the charges against Carter Hart, Michael McLeod, Dillon Dube, Cal Foote and Alex Formenton. The league said at the time they are ineligible until they are reinstated, something the Players' Association disagrees with.

Daly said he anticipates a decision on the players “at some point in the relatively near future.”

NHL players in February are set to return to the Olympics for the first time since 2014. Commissioner Gary Bettman had previously expressed concerns about the arenas being ready on time, and progress on that front is ongoing.

Daly acknowledged that while “the arena’s not done, it’s being worked on diligently." He said a hockey-related, on-ice test event is scheduled for December, though not with fans in the stands.

“We’ll find out in early December how far away we are,” Daly said.

For a second consecutive year, the NHL draft will be a decentralized event, with team staff not on site, Daly confirmed. The league experimented with the format in June after a vast majority of teams voted to decentralize the event, like the NFL and NBA have done for quite some time.

“It was clear that, while it wasn’t as overwhelming a vote as it was the first time we asked, it was still a strong majority who wanted to have a decentralized draft,” Daly said.

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