The NHL has more than five times as many trade-protected players as the NBA, NFL and MLB combined. Now the commissioner is wondering if the league created a monster.
There are plenty of things NHL fans can argue about.
Goaltender interference.
The salary cap.
The shootout.
Whether the Leafs will ever win another Cup.
But this offseason produced a much more interesting debate:
Who should actually control an NHL player’s future, the team that signed the contract or the player who signed it?
The simple answer is both. That’s what a contract is.
But then Brady Tkachuk forced his way to Florida. Dylan Larkin asked out of Detroit with a short list of acceptable destinations. Connor Hellebuyck asked out of Winnipeg and is now sitting at home, suspended.
And on Oct. 1, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman admitted something might have to change.
The NHL Is in a League of Its Own
Start with the numbers. In June, sports legal analyst Eric Macramalla counted roughly how many players in each league had no-trade or no-movement protection:
| League | Players with trade protection |
|---|---|
| NHL | 245 |
| MLB | 35 |
| NFL | 8 |
| NBA | 2 |
That’s more than five times as many as the other three leagues combined.
By mid-August, a Deseret News count put it at 312 NHL players with some form of trade protection, including 111 full no-movement clauses. Every team has at least five protected players. The Leafs lead the league with 15. (Of course they do.)
What makes that strange is that hockey pays its stars the least.
- NHL superstar: roughly $10–16 million a year. Cale Makar becomes the first $20 million player when his new deal kicks in next season.
- NBA superstar: $50–70 million.
- MLB superstar: $40–70 million.
- Elite NFL quarterback: $50–65 million.
So why are hockey players the ones getting control?
Reason 1: the hard cap. NHL teams can’t go over the cap, so they hand out trade protection instead of extra money. Former Lightning forward Tyler Johnson told Jeff Marek on The Sheet that his camp valued his no-trade clause at “about $500,000 to $750,000 a year.” In other words, protection is currency.
Reason 2: age. The average NHL player is 28.6, older than the average in the NBA (26.4) or NFL (26.6). Older players are more likely to have a wife, kids and a mortgage, and stability matters more when you’re moving a whole family.
The other leagues aren’t apples to apples, either:
- MLB players get automatic protection through the “10-and-5” rule: 10 years in the league, the last five with the same team.
- NBA players need eight years in the league and four with their current team just to be eligible for a no-trade clause.
- NFL contracts are largely non-guaranteed anyway.
But the point stands. Hockey made movement protection a standard bargaining chip. Nobody else did.
Quick Primer: NTC vs. NMC
No-trade clause (NTC): the player can block a trade. A full NTC blocks every trade; a modified one gives him a list of teams he will or won’t accept. But the team can still put him on waivers or buy him out. Tampa did exactly that to Tyler Johnson in 2020, when his short list didn’t produce a deal.
No-movement clause (NMC): the big one. The player can’t be traded, waived or sent to the minors without his consent.
From the Player’s Chair, It’s Easy to Understand
You’re 25. You finally made the NHL. You get married, have kids and buy a house. Your kids start school. You build a life.
Then your team needs cap space, and you’re gone.
That’s not a hypothetical. Ask Nate Schmidt. He signed a six-year, $35.7 million deal in Vegas, got traded to Vancouver for a third-round pick, then got flipped to Winnipeg a year later. He had no trade protection and no say in any of it.
Players aren’t stocks. They’re human beings.
Agent Darren Ferris made the money side clear: taking a hometown discount makes no sense without a no-move clause. If you sign cheap in a no-tax state and get shipped somewhere with high taxes, your paycheque just shrank.
That’s why the NHLPA pushed back hard on Bettman. Assistant executive director Ron Hainsey called the discussion “an attack on players’ CBA-negotiated rights.” Agent Allan Walsh made the same point: players gave up other things at the bargaining table to get these protections.
The argument is brutally simple. The player negotiated it. The team agreed to it. Why is anyone surprised when he uses it?
Now Look at It From the GM’s Chair
You signed a player to an eight-year deal and gave him a no-trade clause, because that’s what it took to get him signed.
Three years later, the team is bad and the player wants out.
Except he doesn’t just want to be traded. He wants to choose where.
Now you’re not negotiating with 31 teams. You’re negotiating with three. And all three know it.
You’re no longer asking, “Who will give us the best package?” You’re asking, “Which of these few teams can make this work?”
That destroys your leverage.
Dylan Larkin: The Short List
Larkin signed an eight-year, $69.6 million contract with Detroit in 2023, with a full no-trade clause.
After the Red Wings missed the playoffs for a 10th straight season, he asked out. His original list had three teams: Florida, Minnesota and Vegas. All contenders, and all short on cap space and prospects to send back.
Steve Yzerman confirmed the request at the draft, asked Larkin’s camp to expand the list, and made it clear he wasn’t guaranteeing anything.
Then Yzerman stepped down in July. Shawn Horcoff (yes, the former Oiler) is now the interim GM trying to sort it out. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported in late September that Larkin’s list has grown to around eight teams, none of them Canadian.
None of that is Larkin breaking his contract. That’s the contract working exactly as written.
But here’s the question at the heart of this whole debate:
Should a clause designed to protect a player from an unwanted trade let him dictate the terms of a trade he’s demanding?
Connor Hellebuyck: When Nobody Blinks
If Larkin is the clean example, Hellebuyck is the ugly one.
This isn’t some backup trying to get out of town. Hellebuyck is a three-time Vezina winner and the 2025 Hart Trophy winner. In 2024-25, he went 47-12-3 with a 2.00 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage as Winnipeg won the Presidents’ Trophy.
He signed a seven-year, $59.5 million extension with a no-movement clause. It runs through 2030-31.
Months ago, he privately asked for a trade. He went public on Aug. 27. He didn’t report to camp, and the Jets suspended him without pay.
So where are we now?
- Hellebuyck isn’t collecting a cent of the $8.5 million he’s owed this season.
- The Jets don’t have their No. 1 goalie. They claimed Clay Stevenson off waivers to patch the hole.
- Winnipeg isn’t getting the trade return it wants.
- The other players in that dressing room are going to war without their best player.
- Fans aren’t watching one of the most accomplished goalies of his generation.
- The Heritage Classic against Montreal is Oct. 25, and nobody knows who’ll be in net.
Who won?
Nobody. That’s the problem.
Bettman Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
Bettman went on Sportsnet’s The FAN Hockey Show on Oct. 1 and didn’t mince words:
“I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
His argument: no-trade clauses were built to protect a player who signed long term, maybe at a hometown discount, in a place he wanted to stay. Choosing your destination and demanding a trade “was never the original intention.”
He also said one offseason doesn’t make a problem. But if it becomes one, it’s going to the NHLPA.
The timing is worth noting. The league’s new collective bargaining agreement took effect in September, and it didn’t change a thing about trade clauses.
Then Brad Marchand Fired Back
Because this is hockey, Marchand wasn’t letting that one slide.
“Lol, this goes both ways,” he wrote in an Instagram comment.
His point: teams sign players to long-term deals and trade them all the time, and nobody bats an eye. But when a player wants out mid-contract, suddenly it’s a crisis. He called it a “broken system.”
And Marchand knows the team side of that coin better than most. Boston traded its own captain to Florida at the 2025 deadline.
That’s a damn good counterargument. If players shouldn’t be able to use their contracts to get out, should teams lose the ability to trade players on long-term deals too?
That’s where it gets complicated.
So Who’s Actually at Fault?
Here’s where the league deserves some heat.
The players didn’t hand out 300-plus trade protections. The GMs did.
Nobody forced a GM to give a depth player a no-movement clause. Nobody held a gun to anyone’s head. A GM can always walk away from a deal.
But players have to own their side too.
Saying “I don’t want to be traded somewhere I don’t want to live” is protection. Saying “I want out, and here are the three teams I’ll accept” is controlling the market.
And this isn’t new. Jarome Iginla picked Pittsburgh over Boston in 2013. Claude Giroux steered his way to Florida in 2022. Tkachuk just did it to join his brother Matthew.
What’s new is the volume. When this many stars do it at once, with the same handful of contenders on every list, the selling team gets squeezed every time.
So What’s the Fix?
I don’t think the NHL should get rid of no-trade clauses. Players deserve the right to negotiate them.
But there’s one thing I’d change for sure.
Ask out, and your protection is paused.
Not your contract. Not your salary. Just the clause.
You negotiated that clause for security in that city. Once you’re the one asking to leave, you’ve said you don’t need that security anymore. The team should be allowed to talk to all 31 other clubs.
If you land somewhere you don’t love? That’s the trade.
Beyond that, I don’t think anyone has the perfect answer yet. But here are some questions worth asking:
Should the NHL go the MLB route? In baseball, you earn your protection. Ten years in the league, the last five with the same team, and you automatically get no-trade rights. In the NHL, all it takes is being eligible for unrestricted free agency (27 years old or seven accrued seasons) and a GM willing to say yes. Shouldn’t a 10-year vet who built his life in one city have more say than a 27-year-old on his second contract?
Should there be a limit per team? Maybe every team gets three or four no-movement clauses and a handful of modified no-trades, and that’s it. GMs would have to decide who’s actually worth that commitment instead of handing them out like candy.
Should they only come with big contracts? Tie protection to term or cap hit. If you’re signing a two-year deal or making depth money, you don’t get a no-move.
Should a trade request come with a minimum list? Daily Faceoff insider David Pagnotta floated this one: if you ask out, you have to give your team a set number of acceptable destinations. Not three. Maybe 10. Maybe 15.
Should they go away entirely? Probably not. In a hard-cap league, teams would have to pay players that $500,000 to $750,000 a year in cash instead, and cap space doesn’t grow on trees.
And Brad Marchand, I’m genuinely asking: what would a better system look like to you? If players and teams both think it’s broken, somebody should be able to draw up a new one.
Because the current one isn’t working in anyone’s favour.
The catch? Nothing changes unless the NHLPA agrees, and the league would have to give something up at the bargaining table to get it.
What would you change? Let us hear it in the comments.
So, Who Wins?
The player wins when the clause lets him control where he lands.
The team wins when the clause helps it sign a star long term.
The fans win when the player wants to stay and the team wants him there.
But when the player wants out? Everybody can lose.
The team can’t get the return it wants. The player can’t get the destination he wants without cooperation. And the fans watch a star sit at home.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth for Bettman: the system is working exactly the way the contracts say it should. The league and its GMs built it. The players just learned how to use it.
So give the players their protection. Give the teams their flexibility. And let the guys who’ve truly earned it, the ones who’ve spent a decade building a life in one city, have the most say.
Everybody else?
If you want out, you can ask out. But once you do, it’s time to hand the keys back to the general manager.
Sources: Sportsnet, TSN, ESPN, Forbes (Eric Macramalla), Deseret News, theScore, The Hockey News, Daily Faceoff, Pro Hockey Rumors, Bleacher Report