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General Audiences

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No Archive Warnings Apply

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Gen

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid, Men's Hockey RPF

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander

Additional Tags:

Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Major League Hockey (Game Changers), NHL | National Hockey League, NHLPA | National Hockey League Players' Association, Trades (Hockey RPF), MLH All-Stars Weekend (Game Changers), Meta

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English

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Published: 2026-02-09 Completed: 2026-04-02 Words: 20,079 Chapters: 13/13

A Guide to the NHL/MLH: Everything But the Hockey

Summary

What the hell is a "free agent" and why is Ilya Rozanov one at the end of Heated Rivalry? Would Cliff be suspended for that hit on Shane? How many times a season do Montreal and Boston play each other? How is the order of draft picks determined? How do hockey trades work?

All this and more is answered in this guide to how the NHL (and thus the MLH) works! This isn't about the rules of playing hockey, but instead the rules of the league itself. Even the boring bits can become great prompts for fic if you believe in yourself!

If you're writing Hockey RPF, this guide makes sure to point out where the NHL and the fictional book series/show differs, so it still works as a simplified guide for that too!

Notes

Thank you so much to everyone who looked over this for us! And thank you the most to Lithvirax, who was so willing to write all the bits of the guide I (spacegandalf) realised I didn't understand. It turns out writing an entire guide to how a professional hockey league works is hard. All the best parts are Lith's work, we stan.

This entire guide is already written and will be updating every two or three days until it's all posted. Remember, if you have questions, please ask us! We're always keen to improve.

Chapter 1: Introduction and Glossary

Chapter Notes

Note: this guide does contain spoilers for the books. If anyone wants to know what chapters to avoid for spoiler reasons, comment and we'll let you know!

This guide isn’t about how to play hockey! There are other resources for that. This is instead about the legal side of things, how players move around the league(s), the shape of the season and the rules that wouldn’t get covered in a “how to play” guide. It also introduces you to some relevant hockey terminology in context so you can understand it when you come across it in fic and some real life NHL lore because we think it's fun.

The points of reference are the 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) for the draft (since that’s what applies when Ilya and Shane are drafted), and the 2013 CBA for everything else.

The most significant difference between the NHL in real life and the MLH in Heated Rivalry/Game Changers is that even players who have been in the league for more than three years get roommates in hotels. Under the 2013 CBA, all NHL players get their own room except for players on an ELC contract. The second most significant difference is that there are openly gay players. (Wild, right? I mean it shouldn’t be, but we can dream, and write fic.)

This guide isn’t exhaustive — there are some details we’ve skipped because they’re unlikely to be relevant to fic. If you want to get into the nitty gritty of exemptions to various rules and procedures, then you can read these documents yourself. We’ve also not talked about goalies at all, because of how many exceptions involve them. Sorry goalies.

If you see any mistakes in this guide, please tell us! We welcome additions, suggestions, corrections and constructive criticism.

Table of Contents

1. Glossary
2. Structure of the League
3. Structure of the Season
   1. The Draft
   2. Draft Order
   3. Rookie Showcase
   4. Training Camp
   5. Regular Season
   6. Away Games
   7. All-Star Weekend
   8. Outdoor Games
   9. Pride Night
   10. Playoffs
4. Team Rules
5. Discipline
6. Injuries
1. Players' Medical Decisions
7. Agents
8. Collective Bargaining Agreement
   1. Lockouts
9. Contracts
   1. Trade Deadline and Contract Deadline
   2. Foreign Considers about Contracts
   3. Salary Floor and Salary Cap
   4. Hypothetical Ottawa Centaurs Cap Situation in 2021-22
10. Minor Leagues
    1. Juniors
11. Trades
    1. Entitlements After a Trade
12. Waivers
    1. Buyouts

Glossary

These are terms that keep coming up in various sections, so they’re defined briefly here so you don’t have to read the section they’re actually covered by in order to understand the other sections.

American Hockey League (AHL) — the league below the NHL. Each NHL team has an affiliated AHL team, and NHL teams can swap which league players are in (call up AHL players to the NHL or send down NHL players to the AHL) for various reasons.

Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) — the agreement between the players' union (NHLPA) and the NHL that establishes what rights players have and what obligations the NHL has.

Dress for a game — this is a little confusing, because it has nothing to do with pre-game dress codes, where it’s compulsory to wear a suit. Dressing for a game means putting your uniform on because you are going to play in it. It’s a technical term usually used in sentences like “The team is dressing 20 players tonight” and not so much by individual players.

Entry-Level Contract (ELC) — a player’s first contract in the NHL. For Shane and Ilya, it’s their first three years in the league (not including the mysterious year in between when they get drafted and when they start playing in the NHL). Distinct from other contracts because it has a ceiling on how high the salary can be, and you can send a player between the NHL and the AHL at will. It's also got some weird stuff about how long the contract is depending on various factors, but... don't worry about it. Ilya and Shane's are from the start of the 2010-11 season to the end of the 2012-13 season. That's all you need to know.

Injured Reserve (IR) — a player is put on IR if they’re out for at least 7 days. This frees up a spot on the team’s roster until they come back, but does not affect the salary cap.

Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) — a player is put on LTIR if they’re out for at least 24 days and 10 games. This frees up a spot on the team’s roster until they come back, and affects the salary cap.

National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) — the union that represents NHL players.

Restricted Free Agent (RFA) — a player who isn’t old enough/hasn’t played enough to become a UFA. The team that currently holds their rights (the one they played for on their previous contract) can prevent them from signing with other teams.

Salary cap — the maximum amount a team can spend paying their players, adding all the players’ salaries together.

Salary floor — the minimum amount a team can spend paying their players, adding all the players’ salaries together.

Scratch — a player who isn’t playing the next game (it can be a verb like “I’ve been scratched” or a noun like “I’m a scratch”). This could be as a punishment or because of injury. A scratch that’s not for injury is called a “healthy scratch”.

Skater — you would think this refers to every team member who wears ice skates but no, it's an umbrella term for fowards and defencemen but not goalies. I don't know, man. Go with it.

Unrestricted Free Agent (UFA) — a player who can sign with a team of their choice, with no restrictions placed on them by the team they played for on their previous contract. You can only be a UFA if you’ve played seven seasons in the NHL or are 27 years old (whichever is first). You’re also a UFA if you were never part of a Draft class, but were signed later in life or after a hiatus, or you were an RFA but did not receive an offer by the deadline. If someone is mentioned as a “free agent”, that means UFA, not RFA. You only become a free agent once your current contract runs out.

Chapter 2: Structure of the League

Chapter Summary

What are divisions and what teams belong in which one?

The NHL currently has 32 teams in it. Before 2017, it had 30 teams — the Vegas Golden Knights were added in 2017 and the Seattle Kraken in 2021. We don’t know how many teams are in the MLH in Heated Rivalry/Game Changers, but it’s presumably about 30-32. We know of 28 of them. For maths reasons, I will be assuming there are 32 teams.

The league is split into two conferences (the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference), and each conference is split further into two divisions, organised vaguely by geography. Each division has eight teams in it. We don’t know the locations/names of some of the teams, so they’re missing from the following list. The division assignment of teams we don’t know much about is based on the real-life NHL divisions.

Eastern Conference

• Atlantic Division
  • Boston Bears/Raiders
  • Buffalo
  • Detroit
  • Montreal Voyageurs/Metros
  • Ottawa Centaurs
  • Tampa Bay
  • Toronto Guardians
• Metropolitan Division
  • Brooklyn Scouts
  • Carolina
  • Columbus
  • New Jersey
  • New York Admirals
  • Philadelphia
  • Pittsburgh
  • Washington

Western Conference

• Central Division
  • Chicago
  • Colorado
  • Dallas
  • Houston Drillers
  • Minnesota Nomads
  • Nashville
  • St Louis
  • Winnipeg
• Pacific Division
  • Anaheim Hammerheads
  • San Francisco Mission
  • Edmonton
  • Los Angeles
  • Phoenix
  • Vancouver

For the first three years of Ilya and Shane’s time in the league (until the 2013-14 season), there were three divisions per conference instead of two: the Eastern Conference contained the Atlantic, Northeast and Southeast Divisions; and the Western Conference contained the Pacific, Northwest and Central Divisions. Both Boston and Montreal were in the Northeast Division. You can map the above teams to those divisions with the help of Wikipedia, or make your life easier and pretend it never happened. (But Shane and Ilya would see each other six times a season instead of four, so it could still be worth it, depending on what you want your fic to involve!)

Chapter 3: The Structure of the Season: Draft, Regular Season, Playoffs and More!

Chapter Summary

Breaking down the hockey year, from how the draft works to the events during the regular season to the playoffs.

Chapter Notes

Is a lot of this technically outside the purview of this guide? Yes. But the benefit of being the ones writing the guide means that we can do whatever we like.

A lot of the IRL examples here are from 2010 because I mistakenly thought Ilya and Shane got drafted during 2010. They actually get drafted in 2009 and then there's a mysterious missing year where neither of them play in the NHL, but I'm not changing the examples because the only differences are in the IRL specifics used to illustrate the general idea.

Where are Shane and Ilya during the Missing Year, which makes way more sense as a timeline error and probably not a thing that would happen to the first and second overall? Ilya is probably in the KHL (potentially CSKA Moscow, since his father has Soviet medals and the CSKA is connected to the army), and Shane is presumably in the OHL, the league he was in when he was drafted. (He can't be in the AHL because drafted players under the age of twenty have to go back to their junior league.) I guess Dylan Strome was sent back to his juniors team even though he was selected third overall, so... it happens?

The Draft

The draft is held in June. It’s preceded in late May/early June by a draft combine, where the top prospects in the coming draft are assessed on their fitness with various tests and subjected to interviews with different teams. Even though over 200 players are drafted each year (there are seven rounds, so it’s seven multiplied by the number of teams in the league), only about 80-90 prospects attend the combine. In the runup to the draft, the NHL might also have top prospects do fun things to get fans excited, like send prospects to the Florida Everglades where one of them gets dared by a fellow prospect to eat a worm. (Reader, please be smarter than Lawson Crouse and never eat a worm.) 

Players who are expected to be drafted early usually attend the draft in person, but you can be drafted in absentia, too (Soviet players were drafted for years before they actually started defecting to come over!). Any player 18-20 can be drafted, as well as 21-year-olds who haven’t played a season in North America when they were 18-20 (Europeans, basically). Any players who are no longer eligible for the draft are Unrestricted Free Agents, and can sign with a team of their choice.

Teams get to select one player every round, but trades and other deals can involve claiming another team’s draft picks for certain rounds, such that some teams get to pick multiple times in one round and some teams don’t get to pick that round at all. Players who are drafted have basically no choice in where they go; technically they can refuse to sign with the team that drafted them, but they can’t then choose a different team, because the team that drafted them has exclusive rights.

You can be drafted into the NHL but attend college, and the team still has your rights and will offer you a contract. They don’t have to offer you a contract immediately, and will generally wait until you’re available to play. They will retain your rights until a) you graduate from college, b) four years after you are drafted (if you’re 18-19 and drop out of college) or c) two years after you are drafted (if you are 20 or older and drop out of college). For instance, Eric was probably drafted when he was 18-20, but wasn’t signed to a team until he finished his Harvard degree. It’s also possible he wasn’t drafted at all and entered the league as a free agent.

There’s some other rules about who’s eligible for the draft and how long a team will retain exclusive rights, but if you need that much detail, you should read Article 8 of the CBA yourself. It’s complicated and we don’t want to get into it because it’s very boring and we’re writing this for free.

(Note: the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which is the Russian League equivalent to the NHL, drafts players at age 17. This is in the hopes of getting players before they enter the NHL and enticing them to stay in Russia and sign contracts with KHL teams. Presumably because of this Ilya has played in the KHL prior to the NHL.)

Not all drafted players will play in the NHL! If you’re drafted in the first round, you have an 82% chance of playing at least 50 games in the NHL, but that goes down significantly for subsequent rounds. Of first round picks, it’s more likely than not that you’ll be sent down to the minors to develop a bit before they’re brought up to the NHL, because that will make you a better player. Some of the people Shane played with in Juniors probably also play in the NHL, but maybe not for the first one or two years of his career.

It’s also possible to be offered a contract and play in the NHL without getting drafted at all! A team would invite you to training camp (probably) and then sign you if you impress them.

Draft Order

The draft tries to make bad teams better by giving them higher draft picks so they can get some talented fresh blood to develop into future stars. This means that if you're a really good player, you're going to go to one of the worst teams in the league. But you're going to completely turn the team around and bring it a Stanley Cup, right? Of course you are.

The team that got the first overall pick* was determined by a draft lottery when Ilya and Shane were drafted. (The draft lottery still exists, but now it's for the first three picks.) This is unreasonably complicated and is probably irrelevant for fic, so here’s the Wikipedia page. The differences between the draft lottery system Shane and Ilya were drafted under and the current one are minor, and it's mostly to do with how many spots you can move up in the order and how they determine the weight of picks. For a simple overview, we can look at Steve Dangle, who has a good video here that’s mostly about the current version but does briefly talk about the version Ilya and Shane were drafted under.

Shane and Ilya were drafted in 2009, but this example is from 2010; the process was the same. In 2010, the fourteen worst teams by points in the regular season were put in a lottery to see who would get first pick. The teams are weighted differently depending on the standings, so Edmonton had a 25% chance of getting the first overall because they were last in the standings, and they ended up winning. The other thirteen teams who didn’t make the playoffs pick in reverse points order. The sixteen teams that weren’t in the lottery had their lottery pick order determined by their performance in the playoffs. The Stanley Cup winners (Chicago) picked last, the team they beat in the finals (Philadelphia) went 29th (though it actually went to the Ducks because of a trade), then San Jose who lost to Chicago in the semifinals, then Montreal who lost to Philadelphia in the semifinals, etc. Obviously the teams in HR had a totally different order, and the real ones are included here just to illustrate how it works.

The only way this would come up in fics, I think, is that they would know they're both almost certainly going to go first or second overall and thus know that one would play in Boston and one in Montreal a month before the draft actually happens, because the results of the draft lottery are announced when the lottery happens in May. The media would already be hyping up the two top picks being guaranteed an Original Six rivalry.

*You could technically win the lottery and not get first overall, but we won't go into it because there was a 77% chance that the lottery winner would get the first overall. Love yourself and don't look into this.

Rookie Showcase

This is held in early September before training camp, where 20-30 of the most recent top draft picks go to an ice rink (in 2010 it was the Toronto Maple Leafs’ practice facility but it changes each year) to do a bunch of promotional stuff like signing things, getting their heads scanned for video game purposes, and talking to the media. They also make very silly videos introducing the rookies, like Chris Kreider learning about twitter (#KreiderPics) and Ryan Ellis doing silly things with money. I’m just saying, UpperDeck could put a fake moustache on a guy and make Shane and Ilya do a silly video together. If you write this, please link it in the comments.

Training Camp

Training Camp is covered by Article 15 of the CBA and the CBA has a lot of boring stuff about it not covered here.

Before the main training camp, there's yet more camps! There is both a development camp and rookie camp. Development camp is during the summer, and is for players who were just drafted, or are currently playing in the NCAA (college). Development camp focuses on the coaches and team staff telling the player where and how they should develop as a player. It often has nutrition and is more focused on how they will grow as a player.

Rookie Camp is after development camp, and most of the participants at rookie camp are 18-20 (though some international players can be older), and it only lasts a few days. Basically it is a mini training camp specifically to scope out the skills of the rookies and how they've developed and if they're worth an NHL contract. Although in more recent years prospects who are going to attend the main camp don't attend rookie camp, back in 2010 first overall Taylor Hall was there, so Shane and Ilya might have attended their teams' rookie camp, but they might not have as well. Go with your heart and whatever the plot requires.

Before the season begins, every team has training camp. If a player doesn’t live where training camp is held (which they usually don’t — the Toronto Maple Leafs practice facility is in Toronto but their training camp this year is held in Kitchener for some reason), the team pays for a hotel room. ELC (Entry Level Contract; for Shane and Ilya, their first three years in the league) players have roommates, and everyone else gets a single room. Note: even players who have aged out of their ELC have roommates on the road in Heated Rivalry/Game Changers. This is presumably also the case at training camp.

Training camp is held near the beginning of September. About fifty players will attend, but only twenty-three will end up on the team roster for the season. Attendees of training include the players already on the team from last year, as well as recent draft picks, AHL players they’re thinking of calling up more, and veterans on Professional Try-Out (PTO) contracts. It’s possible to go to one team’s training camp but then get signed to a different team, if you’re on a PTO, a UFA or have been invited without a previous contract.

Training camp is 20 days for players who were on the roster for at least 50 games last season. For everyone else, it’s 27 days. If you don't turn up to Training Camp, you forfeit salary and get suspended. For the players who aren’t on the roster, it’s an audition, basically. You’re trying to convince the team to sign you or call you up. There’s press/media stuff, fitness tests, medical examinations, and on-ice activities. There are also exhibition games, also called preseason games. Each team will play between six and eight exhibition games against other teams having their own training camps. These games don’t count towards the regular season standings, so it’s a good opportunity to try out players you’re not sure about and experiment with different lines and plays. 

An unsigned veteran from the league can also be signed to a PTO or Professional Tryout Contract. What that means is they are basically tossed into the pool of players during training camp who are also auditioning to get onto the final roster of the team. PTOs can give salary, and the salary does not affect the salary cap of the team for the year. A PTO is only valid for 25 games, and if a player is "released", it means they didn't get a spot in the NHL. PTOs are usually used for pre-season games and teams will generally make a decision by the end of camp.

The Rookie Orientation Program (later called the Player Orientation Program) is where players who are new to the NHL go get a workshop on how to be adults. When Shane and Ilya were drafted in 2009, it didn’t exist — instead, on the morning of the draft, prospects were given a crash course in finance, how the NHL works, and how not to get in trouble with the law. It wasn’t very effective, given the attendees were busy being extremely nervous about the imminent draft, so it was turned into three days of workshops and presentations held just before training camps start, beginning in 2013.

Every team sends three of their Entry Level Contract players (the ones most likely to get plenty of play time in the NHL) to the three-day workshop, so about 90 people participate. The program includes media training, how to handle money, how to not make an idiot of yourself on social media, drug policy, and telling players to reach out for help if they need it (namely from the Player Assistance Program, which helps players with drug/alcohol problems, mental health problems, etc.). Do rookies actually heed those lessons? Well, they’re 18 year olds with a significant amount of money for the first time in their lives. Of course they don’t.

Regular Season

By the start of the regular season, a team must have between 20 and 23 players on their Active Roster (not including IR, LTIR, or a few other things).

The regular season consists of 82 games played over at least 184 days (until the 2025 CBA changes it to 84 games but that’s after HR/GC). 41 of those are home games and 41 of them are away games/road games. A team never plays more than one game on any given day, but they can have back-to-back games, i.e. games two or more days in a row. Usually, they will have two or three days in between games, but sometimes the gaps can be longer, because of the arcane wizardry required to coordinate all the team schedules. Having several home games in a row is referred to as a home stand, and multiple away games is a road trip. Sometimes road trips are two weeks long! The CBA doesn't specify how long road trips can be, but generally, they're shorter than two weeks. Games are usually in the evening at about 7pm, but sometimes they're matinee games in the afternoon. The CBA forbids games starting before 12pm.

If you want to know what the schedule is like in more detail, you can look at old seasons of the NHL! Don't look at years that have the winter Olympics because the season is condensed to accommodate the Olympic break. A useful one would be the Boston 2015-16 schedule! When it has "vs" they're at home, and "@" means they're away. But if you want to know what time of day games usually are more precisely than "probably the evening about 7pm", you'll have to look at the current season because those are the only ones that show the times, in many cases.

The maths doesn’t divide neatly, so each team will play five of the teams in their divisions four times, and two of the teams only three times. For the teams they play four times, it’s two home games and two away games. For the teams they only play three times, it’s two home games and one away for one of the teams, and two away games and one home game for the other team. Ilya and Shane probably play each other four times a season, twice in Montreal and twice in Boston or Ottawa.

Each team will play the eight teams in the other division in their conference three times, with one home game and two away for four of the teams, and two home games and one away for the other four. For the sixteen teams in the other conference, they only play twice — once at home, once away. This means Ilya and Shane both only play Scott Hunter three times a season, and they’d only play that poor third overall draft pick in Minnesota twice a season. Back when there were six divisions — the first three years of Shane and Ilya’s career — Boston and Montreal would play each other six times a season, and they would both play the New York Admirals four times a season. 

The morning of a game day almost always includes morning skate. It was invented back in a different era, where coaches would use it as a punishment for guys who had hangovers, a last check that all the equipment was working correctly, or just as a roll-call to make sure everyone was there. It’s just a little half-hour skate for the whole team, including scratches and injured players who are still capable of a little bit of skating but unable to play an actual game. Scratches and injured players might stay at morning skate a little longer than the guys playing that night. For veterans, it’s often optional. Some media is usually there.

It’s important to note that regular season games do not have a handshake line. That’s only for the end of a series in the playoffs (so it’s not even every game!) and international games at things like the Olympics. Some teams will line up to hug their goalie after wins, though. 

There are at least four days off every month (no travel, no practice, no game). Two of these days off may be during road trips. 24-26th December are also days off. There are no hockey games on American Thanksgiving, but there are games the day before and the day after (it’s not a break, really, it’s just that the audience is probably watching the NFL so they don’t schedule them to clash).

Every player gets two complimentary tickets to every home game, and can purchase two more (which you have to do in bulk at the beginning of the season). Those seats have to be in the second-highest price bracket (excluding the really fancy ones like suites) and are always in the lowest bowl of the arena.

Away Games

Players travel to away games by charter plane unless the two cities are really close, and then they’ll take a chartered train or a chartered bus. (If you can't watch the tiktok, it's the official Ducks account explaining that the Ducks travel on Amtrak carriages between some teams because it's actually faster than by plane. Did they rent out carriages on a public Amtrak train or charter the entire trip? Unclear. The Flyers also take the train at least to Washington DC.) Players have to wear a suit when they get on the plane, but as soon as they’re on, the dress code is usually relaxed and players will change into something more comfortable if the flight is three hours or longer. Veterans usually sit in the back and newer players at the front, but this isn’t a rule, just common practice. 

Players will usually play cards, watch movies, sleep or play video games on the plane. Teams will often fly out right after the game ends, even if that means getting on the plane at 2am, because the CBA says players can’t travel on a game day. Sometimes they’ll wait until the next morning; it all depends on the choices of management and their schedule. Players get a minimum of nine hours' break between arriving at their hotel for an away game and reporting for practice/a meeting, unless there's unforeseen complications like travel delays.

Every player at an away game is allowed to purchase two tickets, which can be purchased on the day (by 10am if it's an afternoon game, and by 1pm if it's an evening game). Those seats have to be in the second-highest price bracket (excluding the really fancy ones like suites) and are always in the lowest bowl of the arena.

All-Star Weekend

We saw the All-Star Weekend in the show, but this is in case you want to know more about it! It’s a silly weekend and nobody takes it seriously, which is why Shane and Ilya caring so much about the skills competition is funny. It consists of the skills competition and the All-Star Game. My favourite part of the skills competition I’ve watched is players getting silly with the breakaway challenge. Johnny Gaudreau apparently asked the staff if he could light his stick on fire for the breakaway challenge and they said no. Russian player Alex Ovechkin was given a bucket hat with the Canadian Flag sticking out of it and stole Evgeni Malkin’s stick to double-stick a shot at the goalie in the ‘09 Breakaway Challenge. What kind of props and nonsense would Ilya or Shane do? Again, if you write this, please link it in the comments. 

There's a break in the season for the All-Star Weekend. In 2016, the game was on the 31st of January, and there was a break in games from 28th January to 1st Feb. There’s no All-Star Weekend in years that NHL players attend the Olympics. Some players actively don’t want to go to All-Stars because they get to go on holiday instead with their families during the break. 

All Star Weekend is always 44 players from across the 32 teams. The NHL’s Hockey Operations Department picks one player from each of the 32 teams, and then there are 12 players selected by Fan Vote to fill out the roster. The names of the 44 players chosen is released about a month before All Stars. Teams do not control who is picked and players can get in trouble for skipping the All Stars weekend, including game suspensions. For some reason, Sidney Crosby often seems to get suspiciously injured just before the ASG. I’m sure it’s totally legit and not skiving off.

Talking about the All-Star Weekend would be incomplete without a mention of John Scott, who was a victim of Gary Bettman’s cartoon villainy. Scott was voted originally as a joke (he was an enforcer, a guy who fights, not a super skilled player like most All-Stars players), but when he gained traction Bettman was not pleased and then well, everyone wanted to piss off Bettman and were outraged on Scott’s behalf, so they voted Scott even more. They even tried to prevent him from participating by sending him from Arizona to a minor team in Newfoundland while his wife was nine months pregnant. If you think Roger Crowell comes off as a cartoon villain, it’s because the NHL is a cartoon villain in real life.

Outdoor Games

A handful of games in the NHL are held outdoors, often in football stadiums or baseball stadiums. They are the Winter Classic, the Heritage Classic and the Stadium Series. These count in the regular season standings and replace one of the match-ups between the two teams involved. 

The Winter Classic is by far the most popular one, and starting with the 2011 Winter Classic, the NHL produced documentaries following the teams called Road to the NHL Winter Classic. Since it usually features the most popular teams, it’s highly unlikely that Shane or Ilya would be in the first few until the teams actually start getting good again, but once they are good, it’s very likely they make an appearance against each other. This probably only happens once, but their teams could be in it multiple times over the years facing other opponents.

The Heritage Classic has almost always been between Canadian teams, so it’s unlikely that Shane and Ilya would have played against each other when Ilya was on the Raiders, but when he plays with Ottawa, it’s likely! 

The Stadium series, like the Winter Classic, could totally involve Shane and Ilya playing against each other. They could each be in it more than once, but would only be playing against each other once.

Pride Night

There are multiple themed nights, but Pride Night is the most relevant one for HR/GC. It began in 2013, and teams would wear rainbow-accented jerseys and, starting in 2016, rainbow stick tape (called pride tape). but the league banned pride jerseys and even briefly banned pride tape, only unbanning it because of fan outrage. (And yes, the league banned all special night jerseys, but it was very very obviously about pride jerseys specifically.)

The decision about Pride Jerseys and pride tape was ultimately left up to the teams to decide. The Minnesota Wild, Chicago Blackhawks, and the New York Rangers all decided not to do any kind of Pride Jersey citing concern for their Russian players in their decision. 

Other teams however have gone forward, like the Florida Panthers whose Russian goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky, wore a pride jersey with the rest of his team. The Buffalo Sabres also have a Russian player, Ilya Lyubushkin, who declined to wear the jersey and thus did not participate in warm ups, while taking part in the pride night game. His team captain and GM defended Lyubushkin’s decision, citing Lyubushkin’s family and friends in Moscow he often visits. Evgeni Malkin, without a doubt the second most famous Russian hockey player behind Ovechkin, who has met and been pictured with Vladimir Putin, has always participated in Pride nights and worn Pride Jerseys with the Penguins since they started.

There are also other players who do not have the same concerns as Russian players yet also decline to wear the jerseys or use the tape. Eric and Mark Staal, both Canadian on the Florida Panthers, declined to participate as well as Canadian James Reiner on the San Jose Sharks, citing religious beliefs in their decision to not participate in the Pride jersey or tape. 

Very notably, both pride jerseys and pride tape are only in use during the warm up period on ice prior to the actual game (they’re auctioned off for charity sometimes during the game). The teams do change into their game jersey and swap sticks to regular tape after warm-ups before the game starts. Tape especially is a sometimes superstitious aspect of a player’s game prep, the kind of tape, how they tape their stick, etc. Crosby famously retapes his stick himself if anyone ever touches it, and often teams will do social media hits of how their players tape their sticks (some are…weird.) 

So while Ilya and Shane may have the opportunity to wear pride jerseys or use pride tape, it might depend on your decisions about what kind of team you see for Montreal or Boston or Ottawa. Well. Ottawa Centaurs are gonna do the most I imagine. Gayest team in the MLH there. 

Playoffs

Honestly, for this one you should just read the format section of the relevant Wikipedia article (and if you need a visual representation, like me, you can find one here). If you’re really committed to the bit and decided the league has six divisions instead of four until the 2013-14 season, remember that the seeding is different.

As mentioned later in the Discipline section of this guide, enforcement of both on-ice and off-ice rules is much looser during the playoffs. Obvious penalties are often not called, and suspensions are very rarely handed down. This is because the higher-ups want fewer game stoppages and the stakes are much higher for suspensions. Infamously, players will continue playing in the playoffs while injured, even if those injuries would absolutely result in taking time off to heal them in the regular season (looking at you, Ilya’s ribs in the 2017 playoffs against the Admirals). Once a team has been knocked out, they announce all the injuries, and it’s ridiculous. Players will frequently have broken bones, torn tendons, and all kinds of injuries that it was very stupid to play hockey with. Hockey fans like to say that this proves hockey players are tough and manly and all that bullshit but all it proves is that teams are willing to damage their players’ bodies in pursuit of a win.

At the end of a playoff series (not after every playoff game!), there’s a handshake line. There’s no handshake at the end of a game in the regular season.

Chapter End Notes

If anyone knows how the NY Islanders get to NY Rangers games, please let me know. I could not find out.

Chapter 4: Team Rules

Chapter Summary

Rules policed by your team's management, like "don't get too drunk" and "don't miss team breakfast".

Chapter Notes

I've made changes to previous chapters to correct some errors! There are only 23 players on the active roster, Shane must be in the OHL in the missing year, the section about the draft lottery has been rewritten, there's a rookie camp before main training camp, and the definition of rookie was taken out entirely because the NHL and the CBA define it differently and it's not that important anyway.

Not every team in the NHL has these exact rules, because a team is allowed to have three modifications/adjustments, but this is the default. Editorial notes are in square brackets and italicised. "Club" and "Team" are synonymous.

1. Alcohol consumption is absolutely prohibited on Club flights, in airports or in any hotel in which the Club is staying, unless specifically authorized by the Head Coach or General Manager. In all other cases, alcohol consumption must be sensible. If a Player has been drinking and has a vehicle with him, the Club shall reimburse him for his cab fare home without questions or retribution.
2. Gambling on any NHL Game is prohibited.
3. Players must be on time for all Club practices, games, meetings and other mandatory Club events. The Club shall provide Players with notice of each scheduled Club event specifying the time and place at which Players are required to report:
1. Any Player who misses a scheduled team flight is responsible for paying his own travel to the city in which he meets his Club. He is also subject to a fine.
2. Any Player who misses a scheduled practice without valid and pre-approved permission will be fined 1/number of days in the Regular Season of his Paragraph 1 NHL Salary.
3. Any Player who misses a scheduled game without valid and pre-approved permission will be fined 1/number of games in the Regular Season of his Paragraph 1 NHL Salary.
4. Players are required to keep all reasonable appointments with Club trainers, physicians, dentists, physical therapists and the like.
4. Personal charges incurred by Players in hotels while the Club is on the road must be paid by the Player before checking out. Any personal charges not so paid will be paid by the Club, and deducted from the Player's next paycheck, together with a fine of $50.00 (first offense) and an additional fine of $75.00 for each subsequent offense. Players will be held responsible for any damages caused to hotel rooms which they are occupying.
5. Players are required to wear jackets, ties and dress pants to all Club games and while traveling to and from such games unless otherwise specified by the Head Coach or General Manager.
6. Players not dressing for Club games must be in attendance at such games and dressed in accordance with Paragraph 5 herein unless otherwise directed by the Head Coach or General Manager. [“dressing for a game” means playing in it, in this context, not wearing a suit, which is what they have to wear if they're not dressing for the game. It's confusing.] 
7. All injuries, and illnesses that impair a Player's ability to perform his duties as a hockey Player, must be reported immediately to the Club Trainer.
8. Personal agents or personal advisors shall not be permitted in the dressing room at any time.
9. The use of tobacco products while in the presence of fans in any arena or while attending any team function is prohibited.
10. All members of the media are to be treated with courtesy. Media Regulations agreed to by the NHL and the NHLPA must be strictly adhered to.
11. Fans are to be treated with respect and courtesy. Autograph requests in the vicinity of Club facilities should not be unreasonably denied.
12. All Players shall adhere to the Club's curfew policy. [Curfews are usually only imposed the night before an away game; you have to be back at the hotel by a specific time, but that might be as late as midnight depending on how strict the coach is and when the game is the next day. Breaking curfew could result in a fine or being forced to sit out the next game(s).]
13. Any Player who is assessed a minor penalty or misconduct for abuse of official or unsportsmanlike conduct may be subject to a fine. [Not sure why this is in the team rules, since it’s handled by the Department of Hockey Operations and often also involves a suspension as well as a fine.]
14. Use of illegal sticks or other illegal equipment may be subject to fine.
15. Full equipment must be worn at all times while the Player is on or in the vicinity of the playing surface unless otherwise stated by the Head Coach. [Players can take off their gloves or helmets while on the bench, of course, but usually not anything else unless it’s damaged (sometimes jerseys get ripped in fights, for example).]

Notes: 1. Fines imposed in connection with a Player's initial violation (first offense) of a Club Rule shall not exceed $250.00 in U.S. Currency, fines imposed for any subsequent offense of the same rule by the same Player shall not exceed $500.00 in U.S. Currency. The Club shall take into consideration any mitigating factors prior to levying a fine in accordance with any of the foregoing rules. A Player's record shall be expunged at the conclusion of each Regular Season. Fines shall be collected and held for use at an appropriate team function involving the Players and donated to a charity of the Players' choice.

In terms of Game Changers:

• Rule 1 is what Troy broke when Ilya saw him absolutely hammered at the hotel, but he decided not to report him. 
• Ilya is breaking rule 9 if he smokes where fans can see him at the arena or during a team function (e.g. that time he’s smoking in Vegas was a violation). That said, Leon Draisaitl and multiple other Oilers players wore a shirt that says “Smokin’ his way to 1000 points” with a photo of Draisaitl smoking a cigarette at his wedding, so you can acknowledge that you smoke — even at an arena, since they were wearing them for media appearances — as long as you’re not actively smoking at the arena or functions. (The shirt is a joke because Toronto media ripped into him for smoking at his wedding reception. It joins Phil Kessel eating hotdogs as a fuck you to the Toronto media, which is notorious for treating hockey players harshly.) 
• Ryan Price taking off his gear during his panic attack was breaking rule 15 (but that was probably not the primary concern there, of course). 
• Scott Hunter wearing nice jeans instead of dress pants in Common Goal because he’s going to the Kingfisher afterwards is a violation of rule 5.

Chapter End Notes

Finding out about Draisaitl's shirts was wild. If I were an athlete, I would simply not damage my lungs which I need to use for my job, but sure.

Chapter 5: Discipline

Chapter Summary

Off-ice discipline, such as scratches, suspensions and fines.

This section won’t talk about on-ice penalties (minor, major, game misconduct, match penalties); this is for off-ice discipline.

Players can be fined (and are!) for breaking team rules, but a player can also be scratched for the next game at the discretion of the head coach, which means they don’t play. Infamously, in the real NHL, Tyler Seguin was scratched for missing team breakfast when he was with the Bruins. As established in the team rules, a player must attend the game (in his suit, not his uniform) even if he’s scratched. He watches from the press box in the stands. You are, notably, not allowed to use social media when you’re scratched and watching from the press box, regardless of why you’re scratched. Being a healthy scratch (as opposed to not playing because of injury) isn’t always a disciplinary action! Teams will usually have more players than they can dress for a game (unless half of them are out with the mumps or something and they're scrambling to get to the minimum required), so there are always a few healthy scratches. Teams do generally announce when the scratch is disciplinary, which is how we know Seguin was scratched for missing team breakfast. The difference between a scratch and a suspension is that when you are suspended, you forfeit pay for the duration, but you still get paid if you're scratched. 

Off-ice discipline for on-ice conduct is covered by Article 18 of the CBA. It says the Commissioner is the one who imposes the fines or other disciplinary actions, but it’s almost always the Department of Player Safety as the Commissioner’s proxy for violent on-ice conduct or a player’s team for breaking team rules. (The Department of Player Safety was created in 2011, so it doesn’t exist for Shane and Ilya’s first season. Instead, disciplinary action was handled by the Department of Hockey Operations). It does generally come from the Commissioner if it’s really serious, like facing criminal charges related to off-ice conduct. On-ice penalties that aren’t violent, such as diving/embellishment (exaggerating an injury) or making inappropriate gestures during a game are still handled by the Department of Hockey Operations as of 2016, but in 2026 it was Player Safety that explained William Nylander's fine for flipping the camera off while in the press box as a scratch, so who even knows. (A note: there are very valid criticisms of the DoPS in real life, which have only grown over the years and it's an absolute joke which doesn't give a flying fuck about player safety here in 2026! I am choosing to believe that in Heated Rivalry, they did not put notorious enforcers in charge of it.)

Violent penalties are often fine-worthy/suspension-worthy offences handled by Player Safety as well as being called by referees in the moment. Various factors are taken into consideration: how seriously injured the other player is, how deliberate it is (for instance, if you walk up behind a guy during a stoppage of play and push him over vs boarding a player who just passed the puck), if an injury results, and whether you have a history of infractions. Player Safety doesn’t have to agree with the on-ice officials — it can discipline players for penalties that weren’t called at the time, for example, and a penalty that’s only a two-minute minor penalty can still receive a suspension. There’s no upper limit on how long a suspension can last; the longest was 41 games in 2015. Suspensions are always accompanied by a video from the department explaining why they handed down the suspension. Some penalties (like abusing referees/linesmen) carry automatic suspensions. You are not paid for however long you’re suspended.

Suspensions are different in the playoffs, since every game matters a lot more. In fact, the head of Player Safety at the time once said that a one-game playoff suspension is worth twelve regular season suspensions. Along with referees calling far fewer penalties during playoff games, you can get away with a hell of a lot more after the regular season ends.

Players get a hearing when the league wants to suspend them, which is either by phone or in person depending on how many games you’re being suspended for: <6 by phone, 6+ in person. (Ryan Hartman's 2025 "in person" suspension hearing was over Zoom so the distinction seems to have basically collapsed apart from signalling to the media that you're only going to give a maximum five-game suspension.) You’re allowed a representative of your choosing and a representative of the NHLPA. A representative of the team management may also attend. For automatic suspensions, it’s often an appeal without an actual hearing, but that’s at the discretion of Player Safety.

Fines are usually issued for infractions that don’t warrant suspensions: up to $5,000 for a first offence, and $15,000 for subsequent fines in a twelve-month period. 

Fines are either donated to a charity of the player’s choice (for fines related to team rules) or transferred to the NHL Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

A note on hits to the head: this is covered by Rule 48, which is significant enough to cover here even though we said we wouldn't do any on-ice rules. Rule 48 was implemented at the start of the 2010-2011 season, so it’s existed for all of Ilya and Shane’s time in the NHL (but not, for example, Ryan Price’s). There were some really bad hits in 2010 that prompted the creation of the rule. The wording is tweaked a few times, and finalised in 2016, which means it’s in its current form for everyone’s favourite head injury, the hit Shane takes from Cliff Marlow/Marleau. The rule is as follows:

48.1 Illegal Check to the Head – A hit resulting in contact with an opponent’s head where the head was the main point of contact and such contact to the head was avoidable is not permitted. In determining whether contact with an opponent's head was avoidable, the circumstances of the hit including the following shall be considered:

(i) Whether the player attempted to hit squarely through the opponent’s body and the head was not "picked" as a result of poor timing, poor angle of approach, or unnecessary extension of the body upward or outward.

(ii) Whether the opponent put himself in a vulnerable position by assuming a posture that made head contact on an otherwise full body check unavoidable.

(iii) Whether the opponent materially changed the position of his body or head immediately prior to or simultaneously with the hit in a way that significantly contributed to the head contact.

48.2 Minor Penalty – For violation of this rule, a minor penalty shall be assessed.

48.3 Major Penalty – There is no provision for a major penalty for this rule

48.4 Game Misconduct Penalty – There is no provision for a game misconduct for this rule.

48.5 Match Penalty – The Referee, at his discretion, may assess a match penalty if, in his judgment, the player attempted to or deliberately injured his opponent with an illegal check to the head.

If deemed appropriate, supplementary discipline can be applied by the Commissioner at his discretion.

I have no idea why it’s a minor penalty instead of a major penalty, given it’s so serious and will frequently cause a suspension. If anyone knows, please comment with the answer!

In both the book and the show, the hit is clean (i.e., legal) — Shane has possession of the puck, so he’s fair game, and there’s no indication that Cliff deliberately targeted his head. In the show, Shane is even looking behind him at the time of the hit, which is a big no-no when you have the puck; it means you can’t see hits coming, and that’s your own fault. Fans would probably be braying for a suspension under Rule 48 for Cliff, but none of those conditions apply, so he probably wouldn’t be punished by Player Safety. The former director of Player Safety states as much in an interview from 2016: “I had a player who asked me, ‘If I hit a guy clean, but he gets hurt and I have a history, am I gonna get suspended?’ And I said ‘no.’ The presence of an injury does not make a legal hit illegal. However, if there is an illegal hit, the lack of injury will not exonerate you. But the presence of an injury will get you [suspended for] more games.”

He might have been given a minor penalty at the time by a referee erring on the side of caution because he would know it’s going to prompt retaliation from the Metros and he hopes to minimise the inevitable violence. He probably wouldn’t have given him a match penalty (which would have banished him for the rest of the game), especially considering Cliff’s reaction in the immediate aftermath. Hayden, on the other hand, would get a penalty for punching him. (Note that it's expected and seen as a good thing to do to fight the guy who did a bad hit on one of your teammates; there was a lot of drama when the Leafs didn't start a brawl in response to Radko Gudas taking out Auston Matthews during a game. After his ridiculously short five-game suspension, Gudas publicly stated that he was playing through injury in the next Leafs-Ducks game specifically so he could get beaten up by Leafs players in retaliation for the hit. As soon as the first puck was dropped, Max Domi dropped the gloves and fought Gudas for Matthews' honour. Fights like this are an expected part of hockey culture where the players police each other in addition to formal discipline. If only there were, say, a department in charge of player safety that handed out appropriate punishments...)

Another fun divergence from the CBA in the books (spoilers for The Long Game ahead!) is that when Ilya and Shane are scratched following the FanMail and are called into the meeting with the Commissioner, they should have looped in the players union and had a representative of the union with them in any disciplinary meeting with the commissioner. While Shane and Ilya’s coach are totally able to scratch them both from their games the night of the reveal, Ilya should have traveled with the team, and Shane should have been in the box at the arena, as directed by the CBA.

A fun (read: horrible) part of the NHL by-laws is that you are Never Allowed To Criticise The Officiating or make any statements "prejudicial to the welfare of the League or the game of hockey or a Member Club". This means that Shane or Ilya could face fines for speaking up about their treatment, technically. There would probably be fan backlash but in real life the NHL doesn't give a fuck about fan backlash (whether it comes from hockey insiders/respected hockey journalists or just regular fans) so it would be very realistic for Crowell to double down on this. These fines are handed out at the discretion of the Commissioner. The New York Rangers got fined $250,000 for putting out an angry statement about a hit by Tom Wilson.

Chapter 6: Injuries

Chapter Summary

Hockey's a dangerous sport. Here you'll find out what medical staff they have on hand, how much they can disclose about a player's health, medical insurance and what happens when a player gets injured mid-game. You also find out how many mumps outbreaks the NHL has had in the last twelve years. The answer may surprise you!

Chapter Notes

In the structure of the season chapter, I have now added how many comped tickets players get for home (2 and can buy 2 more) and away games (none but you can buy 2)!

Injuries in the NHL are rampant, common, and generally obfuscated by teams and players as much as possible. There is a whole section in the CBA about player Medical/Health (Article 34). 

Some important points is that there is an expectation of player-patient confidentiality, even when the medical professional is employed by the team, however this is waived in favor of the team’s behalf during pre-season player fitness evaluations, as well as when making a determination of player fitness in-season. If a player gets an injury that impacts his ability to play, the player is required to tell his team trainer.

During the year each team is required to have two doctors on staff and in arena for all home games, as well as two Athletic Trainers, one of which is on bench with the team during all games and practices. There are often other specialists such as an orthopedic or internal medicine specialist in addition to the team's medical staff that are chosen at the specialty discretion of the medical staff. If you want a really gory article about what it’s like being an on-call NHL dentist, you can read one here. They must also have one person on staff who monitors the use of prescription drugs, especially controlled substances and sleeping pills, but they don't need to be at the game.

Injuries that happen mid-game will cause the game to stop briefly, and if there’s any blood on the ice, they clean that up before play resumes. Players do their best to get off the ice under their own power, because they’re working in a culture that praises toughness over safety. If a player can conceivably go back on the ice after being given enough painkillers to down a horse, that’s what they do, and coming back to play in the same game after a bad hit is a badge of honour. In the playoffs, this is magnified tenfold; even injuries that would usually put a player on IR are usually ignored and the player keeps playing. That's why Ilya is playing with injured ribs in the playoffs.

There is actually a lot that the Club can disclose regarding any injury a player has, including if there is to be surgical considerations, recovery time, or even any health condition preventing return to play. However, that level of transparency is very rarely used. 

Generally injuries of players are recorded on game day in the roster or known because the player is either listed on the Injured Reserve (IR) or Long Term Injured Reserve (LTIR). A team will usually announce something vague like “X is out with an upper body injury for a week” or sometimes they’ll say a player is “day-to-day”, in the sense that they’re not sure when exactly he’ll be back. Only saying “upper body” or “lower body” means that future opponents can't target your player's past injuries. 

A locker room is also a perfect place to spread disease, so sometimes a disease rips through a team and they have to scramble to fill their roster temporarily. The NHL has had two completely unrelated mumps outbreaks, both somehow started by the Mumpesota Wild.

A player can be placed on IR if he’s unable to perform his duties for a minimum of seven (7) days from the onset of such injury, illness or disability, and it frees up a slot on the roster so the team can replace him temporarily. A player is placed on LTIR if they are unable to play for 24 days and 10 games; a team must file a Bona Fide Long Term Injury Exception on their behalf, and deals with salary cap considerations and is generally boring. When a player is taken off IR/LTIR, the term used in announcement is that he's "activated off IR/LTIR". It's weird terminology, but that's what they use.

You would think that NHL players would wear safety equipment to make sure they aren't injured, because injuries are usually the reason hockey players end up retiring. This is unfortunately not true, because taking care of yourself is for pussies. Remember, this league runs entirely on toxic masculinity. If you want to know more about attitudes towards safety equipment, there's a really cool video about it here. If a new piece of safety equipment becomes mandatory, it is only mandatory for the incoming draft class and those following it, not players who are already playing. This is why there are players in the league who don't even wear visors. It's fucked up. This attitude has made it into the actual rules — the NHL rules only allow a player to wear a bubble or a cage (both full-face protection) if they're injured, and once fully recovered they have to go back to only wearing a visor. Given the number of face injuries, you'd think players would be more in favour of wearing bubbles or cages (especially since full-face protection is compulsory in some other leagues they would have played in!), but that's not the case.

Players' Medical Decisions

All of the insurance for players comes from their specific club, but has to adhere to the benefits agreed upon by the NHLPA and the teams. This is just because insurance across two countries and different states are so varied it is impossible to have a single company insure all of everyone.

So each club has insurance through a local company, but they are all required within their plans to cover specific things. One such is that a player is able to get a second opinion on any part of their care, but they must inform the team prior to going, and it has to go through a physician on a list of physicians approved by the NHL/NHLPA Health and Safety Committee. Nutritionists are covered up to a certain amount with a referral, and so are Acupuncturists and Massage Therapists.

The option of a player to get a second medical opinion is quite convoluted, and if the team physician and the second opinion differ, they then bring in a third physician to essentially be a tie vote on the treatment plan. If that third opinion does not sway all partied to agreement, treatment is in fact left at the discrimination of the team physician. Most notably this is what sparked a lot of animosity between Jack Eichel and the Buffalo Sabres, who did not approve of Eichel's desire to get a specific type of surgery because it hadn't been done on NHL players before, though it had in other professional sports leagues. Eichel was eventually traded to the Vegas Knights who allowed his desired surgery. Players do however have full discretion to use the surgeon of their choice if surgery is the treatment needed.

The Eichel situation was very novel as most NHL players and spectators had not previously known that teams had final medical say over issues. There is a board that is outlined in the CBA, the Joint Health and Safety Committee, that basically acts as a administrative body regarding all of the different insurance needs of the teams and players. They review claims, okay team insurance providers, and even make decisions on if players are eligible in the case of special circumstances to get certain benefits or coverage (generally as it regards to call-ups and waived/sent down players). Canadian players, with their nationalized healthcare system, are also included in all team insurance plans and given coverage for treatment outside their providence of residence.

Fun fact time: the Collective Bargaining Agreement does indeed put a price on what kind of career ending injury a player receives (Article 23.3)! It's 2.5 million for loss of use of a limb, but only 4 million for the loss of use of two limbs.

Chapter End Notes

I simply think that in a sensible sports league, you don't get two separate mumps outbreaks. Someone give those men vaccines, Jesus Christ. (Although we know Sidney Crosby has been vaccinated and I guess they just didn't work. Sucks to be him.)

Chapter 7: Agents

Chapter by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)

Chapter Summary

What agents are and what they do.

Chapter Notes

The injuries chapter has been partially rewritten (which involved removing mistakes pointed out in the comments; thank you to the commenters who corrected me!) and significantly expanded, adding a new section about medical insurance and who has the final say about medical treatment (spoilers: it's not the player who needs the treatment!).

Every player has an agent, who represents them in negotiations with the management of individual teams. Agents will often represent more than one player (e.g. Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, both central to the Pittsburgh Penguins, share an agent; this isn’t considered a conflict of interest, but in some legal circles there's debate about whether it should be). They’re certified by the NHLPA to make sure they’re legit and are competent and won’t fuck over the players they represent. They usually have at least one university degree, often in Business Management or something, but they can also be actual lawyers. They make sure teams aren’t taking advantage of players when it comes to their contracts, and are also involved in making statements to the media, as Farah is in The Long Game.

Technically you don’t have to have an agent, but let’s be real. Except for the small number of hockey players who have relevant degrees, they don’t know enough about contract law to be able to effectively bargain, and everyone involved knows this. If for some reason you don’t currently have an agent and want one for some meeting you have with your team or the league, they are obliged to delay the meeting for a reasonable amount of time so you can find one. The league/team must refuse to negotiate with an agent that hasn’t been certified with the NHLPA, though.

That last point is a large reason why a European player might have both an agent from their own country as well as an agent from a North American company. CAA Sports is the most well-known hockey agency, signing people like Crosby, Malkin, Celebrini, and MacKinnon.

Agents can also handle endorsement deals as well as sponsorships and charity organizations. If it is a large company handling the player, they often have subsets of their company geared towards player skill development and nutrition/health.

Players will also have their own legal representation no matter their agent status. A lawyer is in addition to their agent and often can handle their agency contract and is just honestly good sense. 

Yuna Hollander, as someone seemingly managing Shane’s schedule, brand deals, and endorsements, is not Shane’s agent. That is Farah. Yuna may well handle all of the off-ice aspects of Shane’s portfolio, but contract negotiations between teams and Shane will be done between the team and Farah. No matter what, Yuna Hollander is awesome, and we should make that a tag on AO3. 

If you want to know more about agents and the parts of hockey you don't usually hear about, my friend recommends the Agent Provocateur podcast! Disclaimer: Neither of the authors of this guide have listened to the podcast, so if it's actually awful, let us know.

Conflicts of Interest

The most common form of conflict of interest in the NHL arise due to agents. The NHLPA regulations do prevent agents from representing both players and employees of clubs, such as coaches or general managers. Now as the majority of agents hold law degrees and are lawyers very aware of conflict of interest and ethical guidelines, it does still occasionally raise questions about both ethics and conflicts of interest as sometimes law firms or agencies will employ agents on opposing sides of negotiations and disputes.

This was a topic of discussion during Austin Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leaf's last contract negotiation as he was represented by agents from the firm, Wasserman, and his general manager, Kyle Dubas, was represented by another party also at the Wasserman firm.

Dubas' lawyer does not represent NHL players and is thus not subject to the NHLPA’s regulations. However, his colleagues that represent NHL players are subject to the regulations. While they themselves do not represent club employees, their colleague does. This was a questions raised in 2024 when Dubas moved to the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the NHLPA will probably be taking into account in their agent regulations and maybe even their CBA negotations going forward.

Player conflicts of interest are easier to ascertain as they primarily hinge on financial collusion with referees, linesman, and employees of the NHL. As well as outlining that no player shall be representation of another player in matters of financial or player representation. So Player A can't fund or loan Player B money contingent on Player B's future contract and bonuses. Basically, when Crowell accuses Shane and Ilya of not disclosing their relationship, they are not required to per the CBA that governs the sport. Suck on that Crowell!

Chapter 8: Collective Bargaining Agreement and Lockouts

Chapter Summary

NHL players have a union which protects their rights. Sometimes the league pushes back on their demands, and lockouts occur — which admittedly don't exist in HR/GC, but present delightful fic opportunities. Also the authors just really like unions, okay?

Chapter Notes

The previous chapter (Agents) now has a new section about conflicts of interest and a podcast recommendation! The "Away Games" section of the Regular Season chapter has also had corrections.

Hockey players have a union called the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA). Presumably in the Heated Rivalry universe this would be the MLHPA. The ECHL and AHL, the two minor leagues you’ll hear most about in relation to the NHL, are represented by the Professional Hockey Players' Association instead. The NHLPA’s most important job is to negotiate the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which governs the NHL’s legal obligations towards players, and needs to be renegotiated or extended every few years. For Game Changers/Heated Rivalry, the nitty gritty of how it’s negotiated (which has involved multiple lockouts over the years, where no one was allowed to play games for months while the NHLPA and the NHL fought about the terms) isn’t important. This universe doesn’t have Covid and we got no mention of the 2004-05 or 2012-13 lockout in the books, so presumably it didn’t happen.

The CBA covers almost everything in regards to what rights a player has and what obligations the NHL has to ensure there is a clear foundation for what the job of NHL players is and what their duties are. Really. There is so much in this agreement it's wild sometimes. It covers how many complimentary tickets a player has to home games (2) and how many tickets a player has the ability to buy at any game (an additional 2 at home, and only 2 away). As well as what flights are covered for family members when being traded, and the CBA even covers what products are stocked in the locker room showers (Article 34; the towels have to be 'high quality', and players are forced to sometimes take care of their hair because the shampoo/conditioner is 'professional quality'). It's also got some weird gaps, like not mentioning how long road trips can be (which is something I would want in my CBA!).

The NHLPA has an executive board made up of two players from each team (one rep and one alternate). It's often captains or alternate captains, but not always. These players are elected by the team, and must have played 160 games (the rep) or 80 games (the alternate) in the NHL in order to qualify for the position.

Most of the sections in this guide covered by the CBA are going to be about the 2013 CBA, because that’s what Shane and Ilya would spend most of their time under in the timespan of the books. There’s definitely places where Game Changers canon directly contradicts the 2013 CBA, but we’ll note when they differ.

Lockouts

Note: Lockouts don’t seem to have happened in HR/GC. However, there are very much still fic opportunities if you decide to put them in, as detailed in the last paragraph!

A huge part of there being a Collective Bargaining Agreement is the fact it is negotiated between the NHLPA and the NHL. Which means that sometimes, actually really often, they don’t agree!

(Please dear gods if you are not familiar with how union negotiations work, or are unfamiliar with how Strikes and Lockouts work, do some wikipedia diving because it is the reason for our 5 day work week, minimum wage, workplace safety, and so much more it’s insane. Also labor rights are really important and I want you to know about it without me going on another 30 page tangent.) 

Anyway back to Lockouts! There have been two over the last 30 years we’ll cover, the 2004-05 lockout, and the 2012-13 lockout. 

2004-05 was primarily caused by the changing financial costs associated with professional sports, and the question whether to go to a Salary Cap model or a Revenue Sharing model. The prior CBA that was negotiated in the 1994-95 season expired on September 15th 2004, and the lockout and cancellation of the 2004-05 season followed a day later.

This marked the first time a whole year of professional hockey was cancelled and the first year the Stanley Cup was not presented since 1919 (yes, the Stanley Cup predates the NHL, which, cool). There was still a 2004 NHL Entry draft, in which Alex Ovechkin was picked first and Evgeni Malkin was picked second, but both players would spend the year in the Russian Superleague.

After 10 months, this lockout was resolved by a compromise of a soft salary cap and salary floor tied to a percentage of revenue and a revenue sharing model between the top 10 to the bottom 15 teams.

The 2012-13 lockout was a little bit different in that it was not a full season lockout. This lockout was from September 15th 2012 to January 16th 2013, shortening the season from 82 games to 48 games.

This lockout was centralized around the same issues as ‘04-’05, primarily the salary cap and revenue sharing models. The 2012-13 lockout was not a full season and was instead only half a season, with the NHL cancelling games month by month from October until December. This led to quite a bit of uncertainty and confusion on behalf of players who didn’t know if they’d have to report to team facilities next week or could go on vacation with their family. Some players did still sign with foreign leagues for the duration of the strike, and some even launched unsuccessful labor suits to get pay from their team during the lockout (that group included the Montreal Canadiens if you’re curious). 

The 2012-13 lockout eventually resolved with a shift in the salary cap, prorated percentage shifts over a few years to adjust across the league, contract limits set to an 8 year maximum, buyout amnesty period for contracts that did not fit into the new model and cap, as well as arbitration clauses under a dollar amount going forwards. 

The only lockout that might play a part in the Game Changer universe is going to be the 2012-13 lockout, though it’s never mentioned in canon and presumably didn’t happen in its continuity. It can definitely make for interesting fic, if Ilya decides to go to the KHL, and/or if Shane decides to stick it out in Canada. (Please, if you know of any fics like this, link them!!) There are definitely some fun stories of linemates joining opposing teams in the same league, Bergeron and Seguin of the Bruins going to the Swiss League where Seguin is then put on a line with the Blackhawks Patrick Kane, a rival back in the NHL. Also, the genius merrimack pointed out in a comment that a 2009-10 lockout could explain why neither Ilya nor Shane played in that season! In this universe where covid never happened, you can make lockouts occur whenever you like.

Chapter 9: Contracts

Chapter Summary

What contracts Shane and Ilya would have, deadlines, foreign considerations about contracts, and the salary floor/salary cap. Also featuring guest contributor @cayceonthego for a hypothetical Ottawa Centaurs cap breakdown!

Chapter Notes

There has almost certainly been corrections to previous chapters, but I don't remember what they are. Sorry!

The basic shape of the contracts a good NHL player will have over their career:

1. Entry Level Contract (ELC): For players who are drafted at 18/19, they are put on an entry level contract for three years. A team can send the player down to the minors and/or call them up to the NHL at any time. Even if they’re not good enough to play in the NHL full-time, they may be called up to play in the NHL when NHL players are injured. If you don't play in the NHL often enough in one of the seasons covered by your ELC, the contract "slides" and gets longer, but that's irrelevant for our boys.
2. Standard Player Contract (SPC): This might start when you’re a restricted free agent or once your bridge contract ends. There are fewer restrictions on what these involve, but by the time Shand and Ilya sign one, the maximum length is 8 years. The contracts Shane and Ilya have after their ELC are all SPCs but of different flavours:
3. Restricted Free Agency (RFA): This means that a team retains basically first-refusal rights over that specific player. Say Shane is an RFA, what that means is when his contract is up, Montreal gets first dibs and is the only one who can sign him to an SPC. If other teams have interest, they can put up an offer sheet to sign him (offer him a contract), but that offer sheet can then be matched by Montreal to retain him.
4. Unrestricted Free Agency (UFA): This is any player over the age of 27, or with 7 or more seasons in the league (or some other less relevant things). What this means is they can do kinda whatever they want, sign anywhere with anyone. It is often also where you get more specifics and flexibility of terms and financials for the player. You can only have a No-Move Clause or a No-Trade Clause apply once you become a UFA.

These aren’t the only types of contracts, but they’re the ones most relevant for HR/GC fic. For Shane and Ilya, we know that they must have started on an ELC. They’re both 18 when they get drafted (born in 1991 and drafted in 2009), so their ELC ends when they’re 21. It’s safe to assume they weren’t sent down to the minors at any point. We don’t know what their contracts look like after that, but Ilya has a contract that ends in 2018, and he becomes an unrestricted free agent. This means he can sign with Ottawa without the Boston Raiders having any say in it. (They probably didn’t want him to sign somewhere else, but they can’t stop him.)

Ilya and Shane are both generational players (as are Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, the players they’re based on!). Both Ovechkin and Crosby are a few years earlier than our boys, but if you want to look at their contracts to get an idea of the shape of Shane and Ilya’s, it’s worth looking at Ovechkin’s. Sidney Crosby has some weird numerology shit going on with his obsession with his number (87) and he will actively turn down money to achieve the numbers he wants, so don’t rely on him for an expected trajectory in terms of the dollar figures. Also, the kinds of contracts they were allowed to sign before the CBA put limits on how long contracts could be are batshit. Ovi’s first contract after his ELC was thirteen entire years!!!! The maximum length of a contract Shane and Ilya can sign after their ELCs is eight years under the 2013 CBA.

Connor McDavid is a few years later than Ilya and Shane, but is of a similar calibre and has stuck with the Edmonton Oilers through thick and thin. Mostly thin. Someone give that man a cup, he’s dying. (He’s also taken a pay cut to stay with his best friend Leon Draisaitl in his most recent contract. Much like cows, hockey players do have best friends and often play better hockey with them! Sometimes they even take them home, like when Ovechkin took his bestie Niklas Bäckström with him to Moscow during the ‘12-’13 lockout to play for his KHL team.)

Another thing about Shane and Ilya that is definitely inspired by Crosby, Ovechkin, and McDavid is the fact they’re both Franchise Players. It’s not actually a proper noun but it might as well be. Crosby, Ovechkin, and McDavid have never been traded. They are players that management and owners build teams around. The biggest Washington Capitals blog is actually named after an Ovechkin quote (“Russian machine never breaks”, which feels like something Ilya definitely says in the HR universe).

Shane and Ilya are both shown to be franchise players with Montreal and Boston, especially when they both gain captaincy at such a young age. Ilya leaving Boston would have been on par with Quinn Hughes, captain of the Vancouver Canucks being traded to the Minnesota Wild (a move that shocked the NHL world in a variety of ways) or perhaps even more fittingly Brad Marchand, captain of the Boston Bruins being traded to the Florida Panthers. Potentially, depending what you want the Ottawa contract to look like and how ugly you want the attitudes towards Ilya to be, even on par with Sergei Federov leaving the Detroit Red Wings.

Ilya and Shane have slightly different contracts. We don't know all the specifics, but we know this:
Ilya
2010: Signs an ELC (age 19). He remains in the NHL instead of being sent down to his junior team, so the ELC lasts for three years.
2013: Signs his first SPC as a Restricted Free Agent. This is probably four years long, but could be shorter and he gets it extended to get to four years. Franchise players usually don't sign such short contracts, but it's useful for the plot, and it's certainly not impossible — Sidney Crosby's first SPC was only five years long (as opposed to Ovechkin's thirteen). As an RFA, he doesn't have a no movement or no trade clause.
2018: Contract with Boston expires on 30 June. Signs with Ottawa as an Unrestricted Free Agent. We don't know anything about this contract, but this is the first contract he has that might contain a no movement or no trade clause, because this is the first year he qualifies for free agency.

Shane
2010: Signs an ELC (age 19). He remains in the NHL instead of being sent down to his junior team, so the ELC lasts for three years.
2013: Signs his first SPC as a Restricted Free Agent. We don't know exactly how long it is, but it could be a single contract from 2013-2021 — that would be the eight-year maximum length.
2018: Qualifies as a UFA. If he has a no-move or no-trade clause built into his contract, this only kicks in once he's qualified as a free agent.
2021: Contract with Montreal expires on 30 June. Signs with Ottawa as an Unrestricted Free Agent. We don't know anything about this contract, and it's unclear if he has to take a pay cut in order for Ottawa to stay under the salary cap (it's possible that they trade a bunch of players to make room for him instead).

A note from ao3 user merrimack, who knows more about contracts than we do: If Shane has an 8 year contract and Ilya 5 years, it's likely that Shane's is higher AAV because it covers more UFA years up to 2021 whereas Ilya gets a pay rise in 2018.

Additional Terms: 

No-Move vs. No-Trade Clauses: An NMC (No-Move Clause) prevents a team from trading, waiving, or assigning a player to the minors, while an NTC (No-Trade Clause) only restricts trading. These are only allowed once a player is an unrestricted free agent (27 years old or has played seven seasons in the NHL), but can be built into a contract signed before then — they just don't kick in until he qualifies as a UFA. If he gets traded before the clause kicks in, the new team doesn't have to honour it (this was changed in 2020, so now they do). A team in a pinch can ask a player to waive their NMC/NTC, but the player can refuse.

Modified No-Move or No-Trade Clauses: Like the above, except instead of a blanket ban, the player provides a list of teams they don’t want to be traded to or teams they will be willing to be traded to (usually ten to fifteen).

Regular Waivers: The player is still part of the same organization, just down a level in the AHL team affiliate. This allows a player to remain embedded in the organization but gain more playing time or experience. Regular Waivers start 12 days prior to season start and can be applied until the day after a team’s regular season has ended. 

Unconditional Waivers: The organization would like to terminate the specific players contract. This could be due to cap space problems, or even due to personality clashes or changing game plans within the organization.

Waivers are important because after a player is told by their GM they have been put on waivers, there is a 24 hour window before they have to report to their AHL team. During that 24 hours they can be claimed off waivers by any team in the league. If there are multiple teams interested, the team with the lowest points in the season has priority to claim the player.

Waiver Exemption: a player signed after age 18 can be exempt from waivers until they've played 160 games or 3 seasons in the NHL, whichever comes first. The waiver process is meant to develop young talent in the league and not allow teams to ‘stash’ NHL talent in their affiliate teams. 

Two-way contract: This will never be relevant for fic, but it's often confused (I was wrong about what it meant before I wrote this guide!). It means that a player gets a different salary depending on whether he's playing in the AHL or the NHL. ELCs are always two-way contracts, but standard contracts can be too, depending on what's negotiated. After their ELCs, Shane and Ilya probably get one-way contracts (i.e., you get the same amount regardless). It has absolutely nothing to do with whether you need to be put on waivers to be sent down to the AHL, which is usually what it's mistaken for.

Average Annual Value (AAV): Some contracts will have players getting paid different amounts in different years over the length of the contract, so the AAV is all of that smoothed out as if they get paid the same every year. This is what's used to calculate a contract's cap hit, which is how much space a contract takes up in terms of the salary cap.

Signing bonus: This won't be relevant to fic but there's a good explainer here if you want one! It has to do with how the money from a contract is paid out and what's guaranteed if the player retires.

Trade Deadline and Contract Deadline

In order to preserve NHL rosters and not have everyone every-which way being traded up until the Stanley Cup Final Game 7, there is a deadline. Players traded after this date are ineligible for the Playoffs. This date changes year to year, but it is generally the first week of March. 

Contract deadlines are slightly different depending on the type of contract a player has. RFA and UFA signing periods start on July 1st, as July 1st is considered the ‘start of the NHL year’ for purposes of financial and scheduling. This is referred to as free agent season or period and has lots of news. The beginning of July is quite busy, as bonuses are paid out for the prior year, a lot of signings are announced, and honestly after mid-July it’s sometimes extremely hard to get a hold of anyone in decision making because they all holiday in the late summer prior to training camps. 

One of the most important team moves in The Long Game is Shane’s move to Ottawa. The timeline of this means that it’s actually not a trade, but instead a contract move on Shane’s choice. Shane and Ilya’s relationship is revealed sometime in March, presumably after the trade deadline passes. Ottawa and Montreal face each other in playoffs in April, and Shane trips on the ice, prompting accusations by his team. It is later said that Shane is a free agent and was likely in contract talks that spring with Montreal. He had Farah reach out to Ottawa, and one of the considerations Ilya and Shane mention is salary cap space, with Shane potentially accepting less that he might want. If he hadn’t signed an extension with Montreal by the playoffs, that would have been a point of anxiety for the fanbase (see: everyone in 2026 sweating as the Pittsburgh Penguins haven’t extended Evgeni Malkin — the sweating started in January, despite there being plenty of time to go). It’s pretty weird that he hasn’t signed by the playoffs, but obviously it’s for plot reasons, and you can explain it in fun ways, like maybe his sexuality had something to do with them offering less than he wants.

Foreign Considerations about Contracts

Now listen, there is an unbelievably complex history of the Baltic States, Russia, Canada, the US, and the NHL. Watch some documentaries, there’s a great one on The Russian Five (2018), Selänne (2013), and even a TV show starring a Skarsgård; Börje (2023). 

The NHL entry draft has always been available for eligible North American and European/International players since its inception in 1963. Now that is not to say being drafted by an NHL team automatically means that player is going to go to their drafted team. For a long time, Soviet players in the Soviet League were included in drafts, and were even picked by teams, but were then considered throw-away draft picks because there was no way for them to come over the Iron Curtain. Famously, in 1989, Alexander Moligny became the first Soviet player to defect from the USSR to join the NHL. In 1990, Sergei Fedorov also defected through a truly spy-inspired series of events including a note hidden in a player book, a meeting in a locker room, and escaping out the back door of a hotel into a getaway car. 

This 1990 tale is not so far fetched; in 2004, second overall draft pick, Evegni Malkin was drafted by Pittsburgh and would not play in the NHL until 2006. The first year he missed due to the 04-05 lockout, which kept countryman Ovechkin in the Russian Superleague as well, but he also missed the 05-06 season due to Malkin’s team, Metallurg Magnitogorsk, pressuring him to sign a contract with them and even holding his passport hostage. Malkin was given back his passport to attend a training camp in Helsinki and proceeded to climb out of a bathroom window and hide out in an apartment with his agent for a few days while they faxed paperwork to get his US visa. (Seriously, there were headlines about him missing, and Metallurg even filed a failed lawsuit against Pittsburgh to get him back.) How did the NHL/Malkin sort this out? Great question. I don't think there are any details available to the public, so we have no idea.

Sweden, Finland, and other European Countries do have their own leagues and teams. Finland has SM-Liiga, Sweden has SHL, there’s an Austrian Hockey League, a National League in Switzerland, and the DEL for Germany. 

During the 2012-13 NHL lockout, many players returned to their own countries’ leagues both for financial reasons as well as to just keep playing hockey on a team. 

Ilya probably has a relationship with a KHL team, especially if his father was pressuring him to remain in Russia and not go to the NHL which is mentioned in Heated Rivalry (book). There are a few teams that are Moscow based: Spartak, Dynamo (Ovechkin has Dynamo connections) and CSKA or Red Army. During the Soviet years, CSKA players were actually commissioned officers in the Soviet Army, which is partially where they got their name. 

If they NHL wants to bring over prospects currently playing in Europe, it depends on the country. Most European hockey leagues have an agreement with the NHL where if a player wants to break his European contract to go play in the NHL, there's a fine but he is allowed to break the contract. The NHL does not have an equivalent agreement with the KHL, so those contracts must be honoured (which caused a lot of hassle when Evgeni Malkin defected from the KHL to go to Pittsburgh). Perhaps you could write an AU where Ilya, like Malkin, was strongarmed into a contract and tries to escape? (If you do, please link it!)

Since 2022, due to their invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been ousted from basically every international sporting competition, including World Juniors, the Olympics, and several teams who had connections to the KHL swapped out to play in different leagues. There was a lot of rumbling following the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, but the formal/total excommunication did not follow until further aggression. (The Russian Doping Scandal did affect Russian participation in multiple international athletic competitions, and has documentaries you can watch instead.

Salary floor and salary cap

Every team has a salary floor (the minimum amount they have to spend paying players) and a salary cap (the maximum amount) which usually increases every season. This was instated in the 2005 CBA, so it’s existed the whole time Shane and Ilya have been in the league. Under the 2005 CBA, the difference between the salary floor and the salary cap was $16 million, calculated by subtracting or adding $8 million to the “Adjusted Midpoint” to arrive at the floor or cap respectively. We’re not going to go into how you calculate the adjusted midpoint because it doesn’t matter and also I think I would die. Under the 2013 CBA, it’s ± 15%, so the floor is 85% of the adjusted midpoint and the cap is 115% of the adjusted midpoint. In the 2013-14 season, the floor was $44 million and the cap was $64.3 million.

Ilya’s first contract with the Ottawa Centaurs would be made with the 2018-19 salary floor and cap in mind: $58.8 million floor and $79.5 million cap. There’s revenue sharing between the clubs to a certain extent, so every team will be able to pay their players enough to meet the salary floor, regardless of how poor attendance and their other revenue is. If I were Ottawa, I would be scrambling to find however much money Boston is offering Rozanov because this is the chance of a lifetime.

The relevant sections of both the 2005 and 2013 CBA is Section 50.5(b), if you want to look at this further for some reason. I don’t recommend it.

The profit sharing model that is in use by the NHL is really important in the current time of many sports leagues grappling with stratified teams (MLB) and growing player contracts (NBA+MLB). Under the prior CBA it was negotiated that the top 10 teams in terms of revenue would send 6% down to ‘poor’ teams in the lower 2/3rd of the league. This was shifted to the top 11 in the most recent CBA, with the percentage staying the same. 

Revenue is decided by what’s called HRR, Hockey Related Revenue, which is directly from the games and a percentage of tickets and notably a larger percentage of playoff ticket sales exempting premium packages of tickets, and then the total HRR of the team is split 50/50 between owners and players. There was some weirdness during Covid as due to lack of ticket sales and games there was a large deficit that was then leveraged out on the salary cap over the next few years. This means that the salary cap was essentially flat for several years, so it's probably higher in Heated Rivalry than it is in real life.

How teams manage their salary cap is numbers. They have algorithms running daily to manage the current roster and how much each player costs them per day over the course of the season. They then use that information to know what their accrual is for cap space and manage their contracts around the trade deadline, as that’s when they have to make final decisions on what money they’re spending on what players. If you want a breakdown of what does and does not count towards the salary cap, you can find one here. Everyone say "thank you DK Pittsburgh Sports <3".

Hypothetical Ottawa Centaurs Cap Situation in 2021-22

The follow is not our genius. It is instead written by @cayceonthego and her friend Katy. We've been given permission to share it here, and we've slightly modified it for readability, mostly just capitalisation and putting it in dot points. All the ellipses are in the original.

• In 2021, the NHL salary cap was $81.5 million. Maybe it's different in the Game Changers universe but that's what I'm going with and now we begin...
• When Ilya signs in 2018 we're giving him a $10 million AAV contract for around 4-6 years. He's still a #1 center but hasn't won a cup since 2014 and obviously this is a shock signing so maybe they want to sign him shortern term and it's not a higher AAV becauses he's going to a new team and not re-signing with Boston (which could've gotten him higher numbers probably). That would be the contract he's still on in 2021 when Shane signs.
• Bood we saw as kinda a mid-tier player, like still good but not generational... he's captain of a shitty team in 2018 but has only been there for 4 years so maybe not a monster contract... we know Shane said he got a pay raise in 2020 (which of course he's no longer captain) so we'll give him a $6 million AAV for 4 years.
• Wyatt is tricky because goalies are tricky... we know he is a vet goalie that was backup in Toronto so I imagine that when he first signed with the Centaurs he had a short maybe 1 or 2 year contract for a low AAV... we decided that for the 2021-2022 season he'd be playing on a $3.5million AAV contract since he's now starting goalie and Cens are somewhat trending up.
• Troy we decided would be at a lesser price in the 2021-2022 season because Toronto traded him with salary retained... Troy was a problem player they wanted to offload so we're imagining maybe he was on his first big boy contract at $6 million AAV and Toronto kept 25% salary making it so that Ottawa is paying $4.5 million of that AAV.
• Luca we know is playing his first rookie season with the Centaurs in 2020-2021 so he'd be on his ELC... he was second overall so he isn't making league minimum so we gave him 1.5 million AAV.
• Now for Shane, we know he might take a "discount" even though I think the Cens would have cap space for him... he just came off a cup win which is major but I also think he wants a longer contract... maybe his last contract... so we put him at $9 million AAV for 7-8 years. It's not much of a discount but it's there... again I think if he resigned with Montreal he would get Connor McDavid numbers but new team after a "controversy" would maybe not have him pushing for those big big numbers... tbh I honestly think he could get more than Ilya but I know his Sidney Crosby ass would not want to put the team in that position.
• Dykstra — top pairing defenseman... we don't know too much about him but we said hey, top defenseman on a shitty team? $5 million at 7 years because everyone loves long defenseman contracts.
• Tanner Dillon — all we know is he kinda sucks,,, we threw him $2 mil.
• Nick Chouinard — a defenseman we don't know a ton about either... gave him $3 mil, why not.
• Boyle — ????? Got nothing but we gave him $2 million to just you know try and give a little more money here and there.
• Holmberg, Lapointe, Young — all rookies and they're probably on 2-way league minimum contracts so $925,000 each would be $2.775 mil.
• For 13 players that's $49.275 million of cap space... they have $32.225 million left to do whatever they want with about 12 other players... I'm sure there's probably some bad contracts in there but you know, we move.
• Thank you for coming to our TED Talk.

Some commentary on this hypothetical by merrimack:

I think Ottawa gave Ilya a huge contract because they were so happy anyone good wanted to come there, maybe about $12Mx7? They would have had the cap space because they were rebuilding/bad while Boston was a Cup contender trying to squeeze everyone under the cap. One problem with using comparables is that there's no covid in the GCU, so instead of the cap being almost flat from 2019-2024 and then shooting up from 2025 on, it was a more even increase, so everyone on the Centaurs in 2021 is probably getting a little more than in real life.

ELC performance bonuses don't count on the cap in the year that they are earned, only the NHL base salary, which is the same for everyone. So Luca and the other Centaurs kids would all be $925K on the cap. If he earns the bonuses and they don't fit in this year's cap space, they carry over into the following year.

Chapter End Notes

If you have a good explainer of the salary cap and how all that works, please let us know so we can add it to the guide! We don't want to get too deep into it but would love to have resources we can point people to if they want to learn more.

Chapter 10: Minor Leagues

Chapter by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)

Chapter Summary

The AHL, the league below the NHL, and Juniors, the leagues North American players play in as teenagers.

Chapter Notes

We've added a hypothetical Ottawa Centaurs cap space breakdown by the incredible twitter user @cayceonthego with commentary from merrimack in the previous chapter! I also took out the stuff about bridge contracts because part of it was wrong and it's not relevant for fic tbh, as well as corrected that you can put an NMC/NTC into a contract you sign as an RFA, it just doesn't kick in until you qualify for free agency.

The main minor league affiliated with the NHL is the American Hockey League (AHL). The term ‘minor’ in this context contrasts with ‘major’, and has nothing to do with the age of the players. Despite the names, there are some AHL teams in Canada.

If an NHL player gets sent down, they’re sent to their NHL team’s AHL affiliate. (In the same way, some AHL players are sent down to an affiliated ECHL team, a lower league.) Minor league affiliates are not necessarily anywhere near their NHL team geographically. For two years, the Montreal Canadiens had their AHL affiliate in Newfoundland!

Players are usually sent to the AHL for development after they’re drafted and then called up to the NHL when an NHL player is injured or can’t play. Sometimes they’re called up temporarily and then the NHL team’s management is so impressed that they make the call-up permanent. This system of playing in both the AHL and the NHL is covered in a young player’s ELC. Drafted players under the age of 20 can't be put in the AHL; they have to instead go back to their junior team (the one they played on before they were drafted). A player in juniors can't be called up to the NHL until after the juniors season/their playoff run ends.

If an NHL player is playing really poorly, the NHL might send them down to the AHL. If they don’t have an ELC, then they’re put on waivers first, where a different team can claim them if they want, and it’s basically a trade but their original team gets nothing back but a small amount of money. If they clear waivers, which means no other team claimed them, they get sent down to the AHL. Just like younger players, they can be called up back to the NHL.

If an AHL player gets called up, the NHL must provide them with a hotel room. This hotel room is a single room, and the NHL pays for it until the player either gets sent back down or the player is informed that the call-up is permanent. They must advise the player whether or not it’s permanent within 28 days. If they still haven’t decided after 28 days, they can extend it for another month, but are required to upgrade the player’s hotel room to two rooms, so the player can have his partner and children with him if he wants.

Only four AHL players can be called up after the trade deadline (40 days before the end of the regular season), except in case of emergency. An emergency is defined as any time an NHL team falls below 2 goalies, 6 defencemen and 12 forwards (usually due to injury). The differences between different kinds of recalls are explained really well here.

Once their affiliated AHL team is out of the AHL's playoffs, they're often all called up during an NHL team's playoff run as Black Aces, where they train with the team but don't play unless something really bad happens. You can recall the whole AHL team because roster size caps and salary caps cease to exist during the playoffs.

Juniors

Juniors, or sometimes Major Juniors, refers to the Canadian Hockey League, which includes the Western Hockey League (WHL), Ontario Hockey League (OHL), and the Quebec Maritime Juniors League (QMJL). (The CHL also has 9 teams from the US, but shhh we’ll let them pretend it’s all Canadian.) It is for athletes who are between 16-20, who are generally prospects for the NHL draft or for any AHL teams. It’s briefly mentioned in Tough Guy, the Ryan Price/Fabian book, as Ryan was being billeted by Fabian’s family for a year. There are a few boarding schools who are specifically known for their hockey programs, but if you’re not going to one of those, you’re often playing for a team that’s not your hometown team (since you can be traded just like all the other leagues!), and instead of your family moving you get billeted by a local family and live with them.

The International Prospect Cup/World Juniors Championships isn't about whether you play in a junior league or not — NHL players can play in it as long as they're under the age of 20. It happens during the NHL season, though, so your NHL team might not let you participate if they want you playing in NHL games instead. Neither Ilya nor Shane were playing in the NHL when they attended the IPC because of the timeline error/missing year, so they didn't have to take that into account.

As someone who is writing a guide on the Collective Bargaining Agreement of the NHL, please believe me when I say there is too much complication within the realm of the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) for me to explain it here. Prior to 2025, under the NCAA rules CHL players were considered professional athletes, but that has since changed. There can be Canadian players who decide to go to US universities and play in their hockey teams, and vice versa for US kids to head to the CHL and try their skill there. There are players who have been drafted to NHL teams who are currently playing in both the CHL and NCAA competitions. You can't play for the NHL and the NCAA at the same time (i.e., you can't be called up to the NHL if you're currently going to college unless you decide to drop out entirely, which some players do).

Chapter 11: Trades

Chapter by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)

Chapter Summary

How trades work, how traded players find out they've been traded, and what happens if you just took out a mortgage on a new house but have to move halfway across the country.

Chapter Notes

We've added some small details about the executive board for the NHLPA in the Collective Bargaining Agreement chapter and a juicy bit of the by-laws regarding criticism of the league in the Discipline chapter.

A trade, at its most basic, is when a player goes to a different team in return for something. You cannot trade a player for nothing, and you cannot trade a player for a sum of money. Salary cap considerations are always a big part of trades (and it can kind of seem like you’re trading for money in that sense), but you can’t give the New York Admirals’ GM a cheque for $100 in exchange for one of their players; that’s illegal. Trades can occur at any time (except for the holiday roster freeze from 20th December to 27th December); there’s no transfer window like there is in some other sports. The trade deadline (40 days before the end of the regular season, normally early March) is when teams need to submit their rosters for the playoffs each year, and players can’t be traded after that point. Lots of trades happen in the run-up to the trade deadline, because there’s nothing like a deadline to get people going and teams are in a clearer position to decide what they want to acquire for a playoff run.

Some trade variations that exist in the NHL (all of these can be combined/mixed and matched):

•  Multiple players on one or both sides (e.g. you might trade two slightly less good players for one great player)
• Trading a player and retaining the salary
• Trading for future draft picks (e.g. trading Random Player for the NY Admirals’ 1st and 2nd round picks next year)
• Trading for “future considerations” (the bare minimum exchange; this is “idk bro it’s some favour I’ll call in later”)
• Three way trade

A retained salary is when you send a player to another team, but you still pay part of his salary until his current contract expires. The maximum amount of salary a team can retain is 50%, and then that is added to the players SPC as a Retained Salary Transaction. Each SPC can only have two Retained Salary Transactions attached to it, so any further movement by that player cannot include another retained salary transaction. (e.g., let's say Ryan Price had a contract with the Houston Drillers but was traded to Boston, where Houston retained part of his salary. There was another trade for Price from Boston to Anaheim, and Boston retained a part of his salary, as did Houston. When Price is then traded by Anaheim to Toronto, Toronto cannot get Anaheim to pay a retained salary transaction on Price’s contract because his SPC already has two retained salary contracts from Boston and Houston.)

You might want to retain part of a player’s salary because you want to use it to meet the salary floor. Or maybe you retain his salary because that’s the only way the other team will agree to it. Retained salary still counts towards the salary cap for the team retaining it, and a team can only retain three players’ salaries at a time.

A trade may include a conditional draft pick: this can be based on how the draft lottery goes (e.g. Toronto includes its first round pick in a trade to Buffalo with the condition that if the pick ends up in the top ten, they’ll send next year’s pick instead), but it can also be based on player performance, e.g. a conditional draft pick that only comes into play if a player plays 10 or more games with his new NHL team (as opposed to going down to the minors or getting traded elsewhere), hits some scoring milestone, the team advances to the playoffs, etc. This can get convoluted as hell.

A three-way trade is a trade involving three teams. This can get equally convoluted because essentially there are now three groups who don’t trust each other instead of just two! Let’s say the Toronto Guardians want to get a new defenseman. The Ottawa Centaurs need a new Goalie. The unnamed Carolina team don’t need a goalie but they have too many defenseman. So what happens instead of A to B and B to A is some triangle geometry from hell where Toronto trades a goalie to Ottawa, Ottawa trades a draft pick and a forward to Carolina, and Carolina trades a defenseman to Toronto. It’s often more complicated than that, but I trust that you lovely authors can complicate anything for your narrative needs. 

Trades are orchestrated at the level of the General Manager and sometimes the Owners/Coaches. An owner can make a decision on ousting, and give final approval and advice/direction, but they hired their GM for a reason, so they do tend to leave it in their hands. Coaches will work with the GM on what they feel they need, what they can get out of certain players and what they can’t as well as where they are gearing their team/strategy towards so they can be in alignment on future talent and choices. But the overall decision and pursuit of trades is up to the GM. At that level they are also often secret until they are actually in effect. Sometimes rumors can leak and even be purposefully leaked about potential trades, but often there is not much warning before the media gets the details in club statements or rosters.

And now we get to the juicy bit: finding out you’ve been traded. Ideally, you’d get a heads up that your team’s management is trying to shop you around, so you can emotionally prepare for it. That usually doesn’t happen. Most of the time, you get called into the GM’s office all of a sudden and told you’ve been traded. If you’re lucky, you get told before that news hits the media. If you’re unlucky… well, plenty of players have found out about their own trade through the media! Other players have found out from their own teammates (who heard it from the media), and Eric Hausa found out he was traded from the Vegas Golden Knights when he tried to get into the practice facility and his keycard had been deactivated (VGK classiest team in the league, everybody’s saying it). Sometimes, you’ll even get traded mid-game and your GM will pull you out of the game and then try to charge you for your jersey! 

If you think the NHL has any humanity and will consider a player’s circumstances before trading him, you are incorrect. They’re horrible and will still trade you even if your wife is nine months pregnant or something equally important.

Shane and Ilya are both unlikely to be traded; as top draft picks who successfully make the transition to NHL hockey and lead their teams to Stanley Cups, they would probably be considered too valuable to get rid of. It's certainly not impossible — if you're familiar with the NHL, think Jack Eichel or Mitch Marner. But of the top 150 players in 2025, 91 of those have never been traded from the team who drafted them. 40 have been traded, only 14 were acquired in free agency, 4 were undrafted, 2 from offer sheets, 2 from expansion drafts and only 1 from waivers.

merrimack in the comments had some commentary I'm putting here because it's useful: Players can also request to be traded. Common scenarios are a player who's struggling to get playing time on a new team and would like more opportunities elsewhere, veteran players in rebuilding teams who would like to win a Cup before they retire, and scenarios where the relationship between the player and the team has completely broken down (see Eichel again). If Shane hadn't conveniently been a pending UFA at the end of The Long Game, he probably would have requested a trade out of Montreal.

Entitlements after a trade

This applies whether a player is traded between NHL teams or between a minor league team and an NHL team.

• If a player has rent or a mortgage to pay for a residence in his former city (City A) and has rented or bought a residence in his current city (City B), his new team will reimburse him for his mortgage/rent payments in City A.
• The player will be reimbursed reasonable moving expenses.
• A player is entitled to a hotel room in his new city for 21 days after being traded.
• A player’s new team will pay for a reasonable mid-size rental car for 21 days after being traded. (If the player decides to rent a more expensive car, the team pays the same amount as a mid-size rental would have cost.)

Disaster Draft

This is going here because it's more closely related to trades than a draft, per se. Section 16C of the NHL By-Laws (which I've not found a copy of; I thought I'd hit the jackpot with this one but it only goes to 16B, because we can't have nice things!!! Please let us know if you find 16C) lays out plans for a disaster draft, which will happen if at least five players on a team die or are disabled. A disaster draft is actually the only time you can trade a player for money, with the affected team buying the contracts of players from other teams with the funds from an insurance policy, a maximum one of per team. Once the team affected by the tragedy has got back to 14 skaters and one goalie, there's a second phase, which resembles an expansion draft — the club can pick players from other teams, though any teams that had players bought in the previous phase are exempt. Teams can protect ten skaters and one goalie each, and rookies and players under 20 are also protected without using one of those slots. Teams must draft players by position, i.e. if their goalies survived without disability, they can't get another goalie through the disaster draft.

We're including it in this guide because it would come into play if, for example, a team was in a plane crash. Perhaps a plane crash that involved the Ottawa Centaurs during which a certain loverboy sent some emotional Instagram messages. Totally hypothetical situation, of course.

Chapter 12: Waivers

Chapter Summary

Waivers: the way to get a player off your NHL team. Sort of.

Chapter Notes

Added a little note from merrimack about how players can request trades, and if you clicked the link immediately after the update email, you might not have seen the disaster draft section of the trade chapter! Also a little note in the Structure of the Season chapter that the Flyers travel by train to NYC; in the Discipline chapter, a note about how the Rangers were fined for criticising the league, as well as some stuff about players being expected to fight after a bad hit (so Hayden punching Cliff was seen as the 'right thing to do' in an informal sense even though he would have got a penalty).

This is the end of the guide; the next chapter will just be collecting the fic prompts scattered throughout. It's been a blast and we're so thankful for all the encouragement and support! We hope you've found this useful and share it with your friends so they, too, can ponder the possibilities of a lockout season where Shane and Ilya play in the KHL, or give your characters a union rep when meeting with important people. Or at least they can know why Troy Barrett getting munted in his hotel room was against the rules. And thank you, once again, to the inimitable SiladhielLithvirax, without whom this probably would never have seen the light of day. ily <3

A player is placed on waivers when:

• His NHL team wants to send him down to the AHL (regular waivers)
• His NHL team wants to terminate his contract early (unconditional waivers)

A player is always on waivers for 24 hours, after which he either goes to a new team, is sent to his team’s minor league affiliate, or his contract is terminated. If only one team puts in a claim for the player, he will go to that team. If multiple teams want to claim him, he goes to the team with the lowest standings the previous year (if it’s before 1st November) or the lowest standings in the current season (if it’s after 1st November). If a team that claimed a player off waivers later wants to trade that player, they must first offer him to the other teams that put in a claim for him when he was on waivers.

When a team claims a player off waivers, they pay a fee to the previous team, which is anywhere between $90,000 and $3,375, depending on the amount of time they’ve played in the NHL and what position they are. The prices are in Article 13.16 of the CBA.

If a player clears waivers (no other team wants them), they are sent down to the AHL or their contract is terminated. It’s possible to free up some cap space by sending a player down to the AHL, but under the 2013 CBA a team only frees up the league minimum salary + $375,000. For many players, that means part of their salary still counts towards the cap even when they’re playing in the minors.

If you start playing in the NHL at 18 or 19 and immediately start playing regularly, as Ilya and Shane did, you can’t be put on waivers for the first three years of your career or until you’ve played 160 games, whichever comes first. Since you don’t need to place a player with an ELC on waivers to send them down, this only means that you can’t put them on waivers to get picked up by another team/bought out. However, the exemption from waivers is calculated by years played or number of games played; this means that if Ilya and Shane play every game in an NHL season (82 games), they would become eligible for waivers just before the end of their second season. The waiver exemption length depends on how old a player is when they start in the NHL and when they start playing more than a set number of games per season, which is set out in Article 13.4. We've just used Ilya and Shane's circumstances here as an example.

Once they're no longer exempt, you can put a guy on waivers immediately if you want (the next day at 12pm, assuming all your paperwork goes through); Tony Dangelo punched his teammate on a Saturday and was on waivers by the next day. Punching your teammate doesn't necessarily prompt a team to put you on waivers; it's just that everyone hates Tony Deangelo (but they keep hiring him for some reason!!!). Perhaps in your fic there are mitigating circumstances, and your character isn't a notorious racist and locker room poison like Deangelo.

A notable exception to putting a player on waivers to send him down to the AHL is that if a player is coming off Long-Term Injured Reserve, a team can send him down to the AHL for a maximum of three games or six days to get his feet back under him. This is called a conditioning assignment.

A player with a no movement clause can’t be put on waivers unless the player waives (lmao) that clause. They can be bought out, but they’re not put on waivers beforehand.

A type of waiver called a re-entry waiver existed under the 2005 CBA but it stopped existing under the 2013 CBA so I don’t care about it.

Buyouts

Buyouts are only allowed during a specific window: starting June 15 or 48 hours after the Stanley Cup Final ends (whichever is later) and ending on June 30. Over the last five seasons, the Cup has been awarded between June 13 and June 26, which can make for a very short window! (There is technically a second window but it only applies for teams involved in salary arbitration so that’s irrelevant for fic.)

A buyout is a way of terminating a player’s contract early. A team can’t just stop paying his salary, though. They don’t have to pay all of it, but if the player is under 25 years old, they have to pay him a third of his remaining salary, and if the player is over 25, they have to pay two thirds. The payment is smoothed over twice the remaining years of his contract (e.g. if he has a six-year contract and they buy him out two years in, they would have to pay him that lower amount for eight years). That lower amount remains part of the team’s cap hit for however many years the team has to pay him, but if you’re buying out a really expensive contract, it may still be worth it. 

They also still have to pay any signing bonuses, which means that if a player has negotiated the structure of his contract to have late-contract signing bonuses, his contract is considered “buyout-proof”: even though he’s eligible for a buyout, there’s not much point to it if the team is doing it for cap space reasons. Of course, maybe you’re buying someone out because the team really hates him, like Tony Deangelo, noted racist scumbag. 

After a buyout, the player immediately becomes an Unrestricted Free Agent and can sign with another team (if another team wants him). A team might let a player clear unconditional waivers and then offer him a contract if they really hate his current contract, but that runs the risk of someone else picking him up off waivers first.

Chapter End Notes

I guess we have to put a compulsory disclaimer that we don't know whether everyone in the room hated Tony Deangelo. Teams do keep signing him, after all. But he was also the first player to get bought out twice, so ???? who the fuck knows.

Chapter 13: Fic Prompts

Chapter Summary

The fic prompts scattered through the guide all in one place!

If you write any of these, please link them in comments! We want to read them!

• Rookie Showcase: What silly nonsense would the league have Ilya and Shane do in a video?
• All Star Weekend: What would Shane or Ilya do for the breakaway challenge? How would the Cens get silly with it?
• Outdoor Games: What would a Road to the NHL Winter Classic documentary look like between Boston and Montreal? There's always plenty of behind the scenes stuff.
• Lockouts: What if Shane and Ilya went to the same overseas team during a lockout?
• Foreign Considerations About Contracts: What if Ilya has to escape Evgeni Malkin-style because he's been strongarmed into a KHL contract and isn't allowed to play in the NHL?

Works inspired by this one

All stars (and Ryan) by space_dragon_ace