The "Payroll Room" is how much money in a
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
(NHL)
team's salary cap is left to acquire players, whether such players are signed as
free agent
In professional sports, a free agent is a player who is eligible to sign with other clubs or franchises; i.e., not under contract to any specific team. The term is also used in reference to a player who is under contract at present but who is a ...
s or join the team via a trade or
waivers. The term originated in
2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...
with the
NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement
The NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is the basic contract between the National Hockey League (NHL) (32 team owners and NHL commissioner) and the NHL Players' Association (NHLPA), designed to be arrived at through the typical labour–m ...
(CBA), which was negotiated following a
season-long lockout. The new CBA includes a
salary cap
In professional sports, a salary cap (or wage cap) is an agreement or rule that places a limit on the amount of money that a team can spend on players' salaries. It exists as a per-player limit or a total limit for the team's roster, or both. Sever ...
(formally titled the "Upper Limit" of the ''Payroll Range'' in the agreement). Payroll room is often called cap room in the
media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...
.
A team can increase its cap room if it trades high-salary players to other teams and gets lower-paid players in their place. A team cannot trade its cap room to another team or defer its cap room to subsequent seasons. Other practices once common in the NHL, such as
exchanging cash for players or agreeing to pay a portion of a player's remaining salary after trading him, have been explicitly forbidden in the new CBA to try to prevent wealthier teams from evading the restrictions of the cap.
External links
NHL CBA main pageText of the CBA (PDF format)
National Hockey League labor relations
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