Revisiting the Classics: Workrate Decodes The CBA: Hanifin, ELCs, and the “Slide”

As I can find them, mainly through Archive.org’s Wayback Machine, I’ll be reposting articles and such from websites that no longer exist that I think may be of interest, either because they’re still informative or might be amusing to look at in hindsight. This is one of those articles, originally published on October 28th, 2015 on Section328.com. Enjoy?

[The rules of building and maintaining an NHL roster are complex and often difficult to pinpoint. Many of them are detailed in the NHL/NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement, a 517-page pile of legalese that details everything from the requirement that veterans don’t have to have a hotel roommate on road trips (Article 16.9) to ensuring that every player has the option of receiving his paycheck via direct deposit (Article 31.6(c)). Since I’m a sick bastard, I printed the entire thing out and I’ve read way too much of it in an effort to better understand the finer nuances of running a professional hockey team and the decisions and considerations that need to be made during the course of a season. Basically, I’m not a lawyer, but I play one for Section 328. If you’ve got any questions you’d like to see addressed in a future edition of “Workrate Decodes The CBA”, let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter at @MrWorkrate]

This week will see a lot of discussion about NHL rookies and decisions that need to be made regarding their roster status, and the Canes are no exception. Currently, Noah (Freakin’) Hanifin has played 8 NHL games with the Hurricanes, and if he plays in two more, his contract is locked in for this and the next two seasons. This may not seem like a major decision, especially for players such as Hanifin, Connor McDavid, and Jack Eichel, who are all — at age 18 — playing major minutes in the NHL. But what if I told you that the Hurricanes could turn that three-year contract into a five-year contract?

That’s the “slide rule”, and it’s built into every contract a newly drafted NHL player signs, and that’s what we’re going to talk about here today, because for a lot of people (read: almost all of them), this can be really confusing due to other factors in play.

The current NHL/NHLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement (ie. the reason we lost half the 2012–13 season) caps the amount of salary + signing bonus that a player entering the league can earn in his first contract (his “entry-level contract”). Luckily for the player, this first contract’s length is also limited to three years (less if you’re 22 years old or more, but let’s not worry about that now). So, when it comes to big name draftees each year, there isn’t much negotiation if the team wants to offer a contract — it’s going to be a three-year deal averaging $925,000 a year (and don’t worry about holding out — those terms are locked in until 2022.) [Editor’s note from 2022: due to the “memorandum of understanding” agreed to on July 10th, 2020 which effectively extended the CBA through September of 2026, that entry level maximum is $950,000 in 2022 and 2023, $975,000 in 2024 and 2025, and $1,000,000 in 2026. (MoU #51)]

However, that three year deal can turn into a four or even five year deal depending on the player’s age and whether or not he plays in the NHL. If an 18-year-old or 19-year-old player on his entry level contract doesn’t play in 10 NHL games in the first year of his deal, that three year term “slides” to the following season, keeping the player locked into the terms of his original contract for a fourth season. Further, if that 18-year-old whose contract slid the year before doesn’t play in 10 NHL games as a 19-year-old the following year, his contract “slides” another year, essentially making a three-year contract into a five year term — hence the pressure on teams to make a decision on several teenage players currently seeing ice time in the NHL. Once that tenth game is played, there’s no turning back — a team can’t have an 18-year-old play more than 10 games in the NHL, then slide his contract the following season.

So why did the NHL decide to screw over some poor young hoser just trying to earn the contract that he signed? Point to the junior hockey system. Despite a growing number of drafted players coming from NCAA hockey programs and Europe, the majority of players drafted each year come from the Canadian junior hockey system. Top tier junior hockey in Canada is spread among sixty teams within three leagues — the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), based out of Ontario, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL), based out of Quebec, and the Western Hockey League (WHL), based out of a place more western than those other two. Players in these leagues are between 16 and 20 years old, and can draw better attendance than minor league hockey in America.

The concern for the governing body of Canadian junior hockey was that the NHL draft would strip the leagues of their best players if the drafted players were allowed to be sent to minor league affiliates like the AHL and ECHL. The NHL compromised by requiring 18 and 19-year-old players to be offered back to the team he was drafted from before they are allowed to demote him to a minor league affiliate (Article 8.7 of the CBA). Unlike demotions where the team is free to move a player back and forth as deemed necessary, players who are returned to their original teams are generally committed to that team until their season is over, barring special circumstances. To protect the NHL team’s interest in the player and to give them incentive to return a player to their original team instead of keeping them locked in the press box as a healthy scratch, those same 18 and 19-year-old players who needed to be offered back to their “original teams” are also eligible to have their contracts “slide”. Junior hockey got to keep the majority of its best players for their age 18 and 19 seasons, and NHL teams didn’t have to burn a year of player control when they essentially had no control over the player.

So basically, teams have a tradeoff — they can’t send their 18 or 19-year-old prospect to the minors, but they can keep him an extra year (or two) because of it. There is one loophole though — college players.

Article 8.7 states that those teenage players need to be offered back to the team they were drafted from before they can be sent to the minors. While the provision was mainly put in for junior hockey, it applies to whatever team they were drafted from — junior hockey, Swedish league, whatever. It doesn’t say that the team has to take them back, but most teams would gladly have one of their best players for another year.

But what if they couldn’t? In the case of Noah Hanifin or Jack Eichel or any other player drafted from an NCAA program who signs a professional contract, the moment that player signs that contract, he is no longer eligible to play for his (now former) NCAA college team. Since their former team can’t use him, the team that drafted him can send him to their minor league affiliate. This does not affect the “slide” of his contract though — as long as the player doesn’t play in 10 NHL games during that season, his contract will still slide, giving the team the added bonus of a sliding contract while still being able to control his development in the team’s minor league system.

So, on paper, the Hurricanes do have a difficult decision — it’d be very tempting to tack on another affordable year to Noah Hanifin contract by sending him to the AHL, knowing that if he’s needed they could call him back up whenever they wanted. But in reality, Hanifin is needed now and will likely be one of the Canes top four defensemen all season, so contract formalities will take a back seat to putting the best possible team on the ice.