NHL, NHLPA move closer to CBA extension

The NHL and NHLPA are continuing to move closer to a CBA extension, TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun reports.

The two sides have been meeting in Florida during the Stanley Cup Final and, while issues remain, there is hope that a deal gets consummated sooner than later.

LeBrun notes there is hope that one is completed ahead of the Board of Governors meeting set for June 25.

The current CBA was originally signed in 2013 with a four-year extension ratified in 2020. It is set to expire on Sept. 15, 2026.

“We’re having good ongoing conversations,” NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh said at the outset of the Stanley Cup last week. “Right now, this time of year’s hard because you’re in the Stanley Cup payoffs and Stanley Cup. But it’s moving steady. It’s moving forward and I feel good where we are and we’ll see what happens. It gets complicated at certain times, any collective bargaining agreement, but it’s not where it was in the past here or what you see in national disputes between organized labour and workers and companies."

These are the first negotiations with Walsh who succeeded Donald Fehr as NHLPA head in 2023. A former mayor of Boston, Walsh previously served as the United States Secretary of Labour under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023.