With The Draft Yesterday And Free Agency Tomorrow There Are A Lot Of Terms Being Thrown Around That Not

With the draft yesterday and free agency tomorrow there are a lot of terms being thrown around that not everyone understand. I explained this to one of my friends yesterday that is new to the hockey world, and I saw some confusion here, so I decided to make a little cheat sheet with the basic terms:

UFA (Unrestricted Free Agent): A player without a contract (whether that is because it finished, they were undrafted or because of a buyout). They are free to negotiate a contract with any team they want. The players become UFAs if they are 27 or older, or have played at least 7 years in the NHL.

RFA (Restricted Free Agent): A player that needs a new contract. Usually after they finished theirs ELCs (Entry Level Contracts, the one they sign when they enter the league) or if they don’t qualify as UFAs (younger than 27 or less than 7 years in the league). Their signing rights belong to the team they been playing with. That team has to offer a qualifying offer to the players. The players can accept or denied that QO. If they accept, the player and team negotiate a new contract. If they denied it, the player can listen to offer sheets by other teams and ultimately sign with the team that offer the offer sheet. If the team doesn’t offer a Qualifying Offer, then the player becomes an UFA. The team can also trade the RFA rights to another team, in that case the player is still a RFA and has to negotiate their contract with the team that he was traded to.

QO (Qualifying Offers): It’s an offer that teams had to do to retain the signing rights of players. They are equivalent to a one year contract, and the minimum salary depends on the previous salary of the player. If a player made less than $660k the QO has to be 110% of that, If a player made up to $1M the QO has to be 105% of that. If a player made more than $1M, the QO has to be 100% of that.

Offer Sheet: is a contract that one team (not the one that has the RFA rights of the player being offered the contract) offer to a RFA. If a player sign the offer sheet, his previous team has 7 days to match it and keep the player. If pass those 7 days the team decided not to or can’t match the offer sheet, the player goes to the team that offer sheet him and his previous team receives draft picks from the team that made the offer sheet.

Buyout: when a team buyout a player’s contract, it counts against the cap (meaning that it’s money that it gets reduced from the cap) for double the amount the remaining years in the contract. Suppose that they buyout a player that had 3 years remaining on his contract, the buyout will be for 6 years. If the player is 26 or older, the price of the buyout is 2 thirds of the total of the salary, if the player is 26 or younger, the price is 1 third the total of the contract. After a buyout the player becomes an UFA and can sign with any team. The team that buyouts the contract still has to pay the full contract to the player, even if they sign with another team. (hope I didn’t make a mess and is somewhat understandable)

Salary Cap: the total amount of money that the teams have to pay the players. All the teams have the same amount money. Right now it’s around $81M. 

Hope this is helpful and if there is something else you think I should add lmk