LAS VEGAS — Fresh off what many considered one of the greatest NHL seasons, deputy commissioner Bill Daly addressed some of the hottest topics around the league on Tuesday at the Encore, from expansion to long-term injured reserve to the Olympics.
Daly provided the latest on potential new franchises, an update on how the league is scrutinizing deferred compensation to prevent cap circumvention and said the league’s general managers are gaining an appetite to work with the NHLPA on tweaking the LTIR loophole. He also said that he can see a day where neck guards are mandatory in the NHL and that he’s expecting the 2026 Olympics to be played without Russian NHL stars.
Here’s Daly, in an extensive conversation with The Athletic, Canadian Press, Daily Faceoff, The Hockey News and The Score.
Where is the NHL on expansion?
I wouldn’t say that we’re in the expansion process. I wouldn’t even say expansion is a priority. But I will say that our expansions into Las Vegas and Seattle, which were done separately, have both been very, very successful. And I think it’s spurred interest around North America in other potential ownership groups and other potential cities.
We have seven teams in Canada, and we’re really only in the 22 U.S. markets because we have three teams in the New York market and two teams in the L.A. market. And so that means we’re at 22 U.S. markets when the other professional sports leagues are basically at 30, 31 markets. So that means there’s market availability, which I think helps.
I know when I started this job, there was a real concern about talent dilution with expansion. … Skill development and hockey development throughout the world, not just North America, has increased to such a point where I think we have plenty of players. I think we have very good players who could play in the National Hockey League. And so I don’t think we have that kind of talent dilution ceiling either, at least imminently.
Besides potentially going back to Atlanta, there’s a lot of belief that you’ll go back to Arizona. How does the auction for land to build a potential new arena being canceled slow things down? Is there a plan to build an arena?
I don’t think it slows down the potential expansion process because I think the process is kind of the same as (former Coyotes owner) Alex Meruelo would have had to deal with anyway. Having said that, it is a gating factor to go back to that market until we have definitive plans and progress on a state-of-the-art arena because right now that market doesn’t have one that can house a hockey team. Whether that involves a renovation of an existing arena, I suppose that’s always possible.
I would say if you’re writing on a kind of clean slate, you’d love to have a hockey-specific arena that’s designed for hockey or is predominantly for hockey. So we’ll see how it plays out. Look, (commissioner Gary Bettman) and I like to joke that we’ve spent the last 20 years trying to preserve hockey in Arizona. And ultimately, we were unsuccessful with this iteration. Doesn’t mean the next one won’t be successful.
What was the league’s perspective on Carolina’s deferred salary with Jaccob Slavin and Seth Jarvis? Did that come across your desk?
Oh, yeah. It came across my desk. I’m not going to go to the merits of deferred comp. I will say that deferred comp is specifically contemplated in the CBA and called for in the CBA that contracts can be structured this way.
There are some things about the cap system that cause some interpretation to have to happen, which we shared with Carolina in advance. We shared with the union in advance as to how we were interpreting the provisions. I’m not saying that I think deferred comp is the greatest mechanism in a system like we have and maybe in the future might be addressed in collective bargaining. But we’re midterm now, so we kind of are where we are.
The league doesn’t love the idea?
Yeah, it throws out of whack some of the other checks and balances we have in the CBA, which forces interpretations in terms of how we allow it and what’s permissible and what’s not permissible. The original deferred-comp rules were developed in a non-cap world as opposed to in the cap world, so they kind of were inherited and so they probably need adjustment on some basis going forward.
Can it get to the point where it becomes cap circumvention?
It can be, sure.
Is that the fear?
That’s a long-term big picture fear, I suppose. It’s less a micro dynamic fear particularly because, as I said, we’ve had to make interpretations which I think will continue to be binding until we renegotiate over it.
We talk about LTIR all the time. Is there any more appetite for a playoff salary cap?
There are different ways to address that issue, and some of the ones that have been kind of thrown around in the media wouldn’t necessarily be fair or the best way to approach it, I think, because of the way we do accrual accounting. So you can pick up an expensive contract at the end of its term and your cap only gets charged a certain amount. But all of a sudden if that $1 million, say, you assume becomes $5 million on Game 1 of the playoffs and you can’t play that player as a result, I’m not sure that’s a fair result because teams complied within the rules.
There are other ways to address that. I have heard now from all 32 general managers. I think the majority would like us to continue to consider making some kind of adjustment that would alleviate some of the concerns around that. That’s what we’ll look at and that’s what we’ll discuss with the general managers before we discuss it with the Players’ Association.
So you’d wait for the next CBA after the 2025-26 season or you can amend the CBA?
Well, you can always do an amendment before it, but you would have to agree to do the amendment before it. We’ve had preliminary talks with the Players’ Association just so they’re aware of the issue. They read about it, too. And I don’t really know, quite frankly, what the players’ view of it is. So it really would depend. I don’t know what the receptiveness would be to try and address it. And it probably depends on how complicated the fix is.
Players have said they’re testing out a couple neck guards here. The AHL mandated them this season. Is there a day coming where neck guards are mandatory?
I hope so, on some basis. I think we’re moving in that direction. It’s really three different pieces of cut-resistant equipment we’ve seen the evolution of. We started with cut-resistant socks, and now the vast majority, if not all, the players are wearing cut-resistant materials around their sock area. And then the wrist guards, which was kind of a primary emphasis leading into last year. And they were mandatory in both the ECHL and AHL. And we got the union on board to strongly suggesting the players use (them), or at least (consider it).
Look, they’re the highest level of the game. NHL players don’t want to be told necessarily what to do and what not to do, particularly when it could affect performance on some basis. So they’re not going to jump into allowing us to make it mandatory. But I think they’re protecting themselves better than they have in the past. We did propose a mandatory rule, but we clearly understand where the union is coming from and some of the difficulties they have with their constituents. It’s a process.
If an AHL player is called up, he can take off his neck guard?
Yes.
What’s the temperature in the relationship between the league and union and what do you expect in the next CBA talks?
Certainly there are things we don’t agree on. And there are things that we’re going to want in the next CBA that they’re going to resist to and probably vice versa.
But I don’t see any of the contentiousness that I have seen in the past, particularly heading into the ’04-05 but even the ’12-13 negotiation. I think we all knew we had strong headwinds on (those).
Full steam ahead with the 2026 Olympics?
We haven’t signed the final documents, but we’re supposed to get together with the IOC and the IIHF around our Global Series games. Certainly from the NHL’s perspective, I don’t see any real gating issues from finalizing those documents. There may be more significant issues on the players’ side, but I’ll let them address that.
(An NHLPA source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the outstanding issue is travel and accommodations but that it should be rectified around Oct. 4-5 in Prague at the Global Games.)
What’s the World Cup calendar look like after the 4 Nations?
We’re 100 percent committed to doing it in the February time period. So, in part, that’s why we’re doing 4 Nations the way we’re doing it. We have wanted to get to the leagues and the European clubs and federations early to let them know that’s what we’re focused on and committed to doing. There continue to be some organizations in Europe who are resistant to it. But I think at the end of the day we have enough time to make it happen. I think most of the players who play in Europe who would be good enough to make a World Cup team will have the ability to individually protect themselves contractually to be able to participate for the international teams. We’re going to have ’26 Olympics, ’28 World Cup, ’30 Olympics, ’32 World Cup.
How many teams?
So we’ve historically had eight teams and what we probably want to do is create a qualifying tournament for two of the eight teams. So in other words, four teams competing for the last two spots with the other six teams being invited.
If the political climate hasn’t changed with Russia, have you dreamed up contingency plans?
Well, I mean, we haven’t thought that far ahead because the situation is so dynamic. In large part we would see where the international community is with respect to Russian participation and competition. That won’t be a determining factor for us, but it would be probably somewhat persuasive depending on what the situation is. I don’t want to rule out anything. I don’t want to rule in anything.
When will the IOC make an official decision on whether Russia can or cannot participate in the 2026 Olympics?
People are assuming really it’s kind of already been made unless there’s a drastic change in the course of events. The summer Olympics, they did not allow Russian team participation, unlike some of the other models that they’ve adopted in the past. So I would expect that same rule will apply.
Alex Ovechkin is 42 goals from passing Wayne Gretzky for the all-time goals mark. What does it mean for the league to have that potentially happen this season?
It’s on the top of our list in terms of potential events that we want to promote and make sure don’t slip under the radar screen. And some people have kind of suggested that because Alex is Russian that somehow this should be marginalized in some way. We couldn’t disagree more with that. He’s been a terrific ambassador for our game for 20 years now, and his enthusiasm for the game and passion for the game is infectious. And he’s done a lot to lift the tide for the league and for all players during his tenure.
Still no revealing injuries despite the uptick in gambling?
I don’t think it’ll change, certainly in the near future. We’ve received no pushback at all from any of our sportsbook entities on our current injury-reporting practices. Our general managers are very vested in the current state of affairs. So from my perspective, there’s really no reason to change the rule.
Still a decentralized draft for 2025, correct?
Our current intention continues to be to move forward in a decentralized draft. There’s really been no movement to change that direction. So I would expect that next year we’ll do it the way (the GMs) want us to do it.
There will still be a host city, correct?
It’ll be a smaller event.
Some have suggested renaming the Lady Byng Trophy after the late Johnny Gaudreau. What is the process to rename a trophy?
Anything that is done in that vein, and that’s not the first time I’ve heard that suggestion with respect to some of the other great all-time players, we would go to the general managers probably first, and we probably would need board approval second. I don’t think any of those ideas have been raised from time to time. I would say they’ve been kicked around from time to time. Never really gained a whole lot of traction. So I wouldn’t want to handicap what the prospects of the change in trophy names would look like.
(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
