Nearly every NHL team has some money tied up in players no longer playing for the club or penalties for exceeding the salary cap the prior season, usually due to clubs not having ample space in their performance bonus cushion. Buyouts are generally the most common form of money tied up in players not on the active roster or injured reserve. However, they also don’t come into play much during the regular season, as teams can only execute them during specific windows over the summer.
Retained salary transactions, though, do matter year-round. They’re also occurring more frequently as the number of multi-team trades increases, allowing playoff contenders and big spenders to accumulate more talent at lesser cap hits while rebuilding squads accumulate assets for taking on a portion of a player’s contract who will never play for them.
While teams could theoretically have unlimited buyouts on the books year-over-year, they can only retain salary on three contracts simultaneously. Those three slots are quite valuable for rebuilding clubs near the trade deadline, which is why they’ll normally stray away from eating money on contracts with more than two or three years left. There are some notable exceptions to that in this list, though.
Teams cannot retain more than 50% of a player’s salary, and a contract cannot be involved in more than two retained salary transactions. Here are the NHL’s current retained salary slots available for 2024-25, which we’ll continue to update through the rest of the regular season and the first part of the offseason:
Updated 11/10/24 (10:35am CT)
Anaheim Ducks
3/3 available
Boston Bruins
3/3 available
Buffalo Sabres
3/3 available
Calgary Flames
2/3 available
- G Jacob Markström ($1.875MM through 2025-26)
Carolina Hurricanes
3/3 available
Chicago Blackhawks
2/3 available
- D Jake McCabe ($2MM through 2024-25)
Colorado Avalanche
3/3 available
Columbus Blue Jackets
3/3 available
Dallas Stars
3/3 available
Detroit Red Wings
3/3 available
Edmonton Oilers
3/3 available
Florida Panthers
3/3 available
Los Angeles Kings
2/3 available
- D Ivan Provorov ($2.025MM through 2024-25)
Minnesota Wild
3/3 available
Montreal Canadiens
1/3 available
- D Jeff Petry ($2.344MM through 2024-25)
- G Jake Allen ($1.925MM through 2024-25)
Nashville Predators
2/3 available
- D Mattias Ekholm ($250K through 2025-26)
New Jersey Devils
3/3 available
New York Islanders
3/3 available
New York Rangers
3/3 available
Ottawa Senators
2/3 available
- G Joonas Korpisalo ($1MM through 2027-28)
Philadelphia Flyers
2/3 available
- F Kevin Hayes ($3.571MM through 2025-26)
Pittsburgh Penguins
1/3 available
- D Jeff Petry ($1.563MM through 2024-25)
- F Reilly Smith ($1.25MM through 2024-25)
San Jose Sharks
0/3 available
- D Brent Burns ($2.72MM through 2024-25)
- D Erik Karlsson ($1.5MM through 2026-27)
- F Tomáš Hertl ($1.388MM through 2029-30)
Seattle Kraken
3/3 available
St. Louis Blues
3/3 available
Tampa Bay Lightning
3/3 available
Toronto Maple Leafs
3/3 available
Utah Hockey Club
2/3 available
- D Oliver Ekman-Larsson (cost fluctuates due to buyout through 2030-31, costs $320K this season)
Vancouver Canucks
1/3 available
- F Ilya Mikheyev ($712.5K through 2025-26)
- D Tucker Poolman ($500K through 2024-25)
Vegas Golden Knights
3/3 available
Washington Capitals
3/3 available
Winnipeg Jets
3/3 available