According to a sportsnet.ca report published on September 11 , NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told Sportsnet regarding Carolina Hurricanes deferral of pay in contracts , “while the NHL approved the new contracts for Jaccob Slavin and Seth Jarvis, the league has concerns with teams using deferred salary and the issue could be addressed in the next CBA negotiation.“

Daley elaborated:

“There are some things about the cap system that cause some interpretation to have to happen, which we shared with Carolina in advance. We shared with the union in advance as to how we were interpreting the provisions,” Daly said in an interview with Michael Russo of The Athletic.

“I’m not saying that I think deferred comp is the greatest mechanism in a system like we have and maybe in the future might be addressed in collective bargaining. But we’re midterm now, so we kind of are where we are.”

The report further stated:

That the original deferred money clause in the CBA dates back to the pre-salary cap era and will “probably need adjustment on some basis going forward.”

When asked point blank by Russo if deferring salary could in certain cases be considered cap circumvention, Daly said, “It can be, sure.”

“That’s a long-term big-picture fear, I suppose,” Daly added.

“It’s less a micro-dynamic fear particularly because, as I said, we’ve had to make interpretations which I think will continue to be binding until we renegotiate over it.”

The current CBA between the NHLPA and NHL runs through the 2025-26 season.

Source: sportsnet.ca