Go and take it! Inside the World Series champs’ Texas-sized turnaround
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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Staff Writer
PHOENIX — There is no one way to rebuild a baseball team, and there is no one way to exit that rebuild and ramp up to contention. There is perhaps a sentiment common to the start of any such project, though, one expressed nine months ago in four words by the general manager of baseball’s newest champions, the Texas Rangers.
“We’re sick of losing,” Chris Young said at spring training in Arizona, answering a reporter’s question about how and why the Rangers took an aggressive stance to free agency the winter before.
Nine months later, that sickness has been cured.
The road between that statement in February and Wednesday night’s pileup at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix — only 37 miles away from the spring training facility where it was spoken — was long, meandering and filled with potholes.
In the end, though, those four words were profound enough to point the way to a new destination for the Rangers — the domain of World Series champions.
“Everybody wants to be a winner,” Texas reliever Will Smith said. “That’s what you want to be known for, is a guy who wins. … It’s a whole lot better than losing.”
Smith, incidentally, knows a thing or two about winning. He has now been on the roster of three straight championship teams — the Atlanta Braves (2021), the Houston Astros (2022) and now the Rangers.
“It’s something I don’t take for granted, for sure,” Smith said.
He shouldn’t. Winning the World Series is hard. Entering the 2023 season, six of the 30 existing MLB franchises had never won a World Series. The Rangers, who began their existence with 11 lackluster seasons as the neo-Washington Senators, had played about 1,300 more games than any of the other titleless teams. In fact, if you zoom in on the 51 campaigns Texas played in Arlington before this season, it represents the longest wait any American League fan base has ever endured for that first World Series title.
That wait, as of Wednesday, is over.
You don’t think of the Rangers as perennial losers. They’ve employed several of the more larger-than-life managers we’ve ever had in baseball, from Ted Williams to Billy Martin to Whitey Herzog to Bobby Valentine, Ron Washington, Buck Showalter and, especially, their current skipper, four-time champion Bruce Bochy. Some of the biggest stars of the past half-century have played for the Rangers, including Ivan Rodriguez, Nolan Ryan, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, Adrian Beltre, Frank Howard (who died during this World Series at age 87) and Ferguson Jenkins. Heck, one of their former owners used to be president of the United States.
Yet, somehow, until Wednesday, these elements had never coalesced into championship form. And until, well, not very long before Wednesday, there had been little evidence that would change any time soon. Entering this season, the Rangers’ five-year winning percentage (.417, or 67.5 wins per 162 games) was the franchise’s worst since 1974, its third season after the move from Washington.
Now, after all of those requited summers baking in the hot Arlington sun, that title thirst has finally been quenched. In the aftermath of seasons with 102 and 94 losses, the Rangers are champs. How did this Texas-sized turnaround happen so fast?
“We *were* sick of losing,” Young said after the Rangers finished off their five-game win over Arizona. “These players were sick of losing. But Bruce Bochy believed this was a winning team. I just can’t describe how awesome this feeling is.”
Winter 2021
Starting with the 2021-22 offseason signings of Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and Jon Gray by former lead exec Jon Daniels, the Rangers had, in essence, started to put the finishing touches on a work in which the outlines were not yet clear.
Certainly, there was hope that the player development system was going to start yielding key contributors, and it has. But when Seager and Semien committed to the Rangers, they were being sold on a vision, not a track record.
Daniels was calling the front office shots at the time, with Young his top lieutenant, but even as the previous rebuild was faltering, a newer, quicker and, let’s face it, more expensive version was well underway.
“Meeting the Texas Rangers and listening to Chris Young, it definitely aligned with what I wanted to do as a player,” Semien told ESPN in September. “He said he wanted pitching too. He has done everything he said, and Ray Davis, our owner, has been on board too. When you play for an organization that is moving forward and wanting to win, that’s exactly where you want to be.”
All of the Rangers’ key acquisitions in free agency, plus Bochy, were in essence buying into a vision because the team on the field had not been winning. All of them are quick to point to Young — known throughout the sport as C.Y. — as being the key to selling that vision, not just because of his Princeton-honed acumen, but because of the un-executive way he wears his emotions close to the surface. It’s something that stands out in an industry where many of the game’s chief decision makers are hard to differentiate from a tech CEO because of their corporatized jargon.
“A lot of it was C.Y.,” Seager said. “Just the way he laid it out, how he laid it out. He didn’t hide from anything. He didn’t shy away from anything. He knew where they were and he knew where they wanted to go. It’s just awesome. This is the vision, right?”
Bochy had to marvel while on the interview podium after the game when he was read the list of legendary managers who have won four or more World Series: Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel, Connie Mack, Walter Alston, Joe Torre and, now, Bruce Bochy. All the others are Hall of Famers, as will be Bochy someday. Yet even he is quick to point to Young, with the support of ownership, for leading the way.
“That’s a credit to Chris Young and the ownership, Ray Davis,” Bochy said. “They were determined to get winning baseball back to the Texas Rangers. And when we met that’s when we talked about, that’s what they talked about to me. And they did everything they said they were going to do.”
If there is a takeaway for other teams from the Rangers’ sudden success, it’s that if you believe in your system, you don’t have to wait to invest in the roster.
“To some extent, it was to accelerate the rebuild,” Young said in September. “In a market this size, I think that our fans deserve that. They shouldn’t have to go through a five-, six-, seven-year rebuild.
“Part of it was because we felt very good about our player development system and the group of players that we had on the cusp of the big leagues, and we felt like accelerating their development would be facilitated by having the right veteran players around.”
Winter 2022
Despite 94 losses in 2022, the Rangers had in place the makings of a solid offense, in large part because of Seager and Semien’s success. Texas finished eighth with 198 homers and scored runs at a clip safely above the MLB average — and those two players set examples for the younger Rangers coming through the system.
“When your best players, the players you’re counting on the most like Seager and Semien, work extremely hard and they care deeply, your team always has a chance to reach its ceiling,” said Rangers senior advisor of baseball operations Dayton Moore, architect of a Kansas City Royals title-winning team. “Semien and Seager are as committed as players as I’ve ever been around. Watching them throughout the season, their work ethic is unbelievable.”
On the pitching side, Young’s club needed more T.L.C., where the Rangers were a bottom-10 team by ERA+. In response, Young dealt for righty Jake Odorizzi early in the offseason. Then, with the blessing of Davis, Young went hard in free agency in the spring, landing, in order, Jacob deGrom, Andrew Heaney and Nathan Eovaldi. That quartet, along with 2022 holdovers like Gray, Martin Perez and Dane Dunning gave the Rangers one of the deepest and most accomplished core rotations in the majors.
“We went into the offseason knowing that we needed to improve our starting pitching,” Young said during the AL Championship Series. “It was a big limitation for us last year. We knew that we had scored runs and we were going to have pretty much the same offensive team back. So the key to us being a good team was going to be to improve our starting pitching. We obviously were very active in the free agent market.”
Based on those acquisitions alone, the Texas baseline win projection moved into the .500 range — and that was without considering the late October news that Bochy had signed on to return to the dugout and guide the team.
The biggest splash on the acquisition list was deGrom, arguably the best pitcher in baseball when he’s able to stay on the mound. Since the beginning of the 2018 season, deGrom has a composite 2.08 ERA with 290 strikeouts per 162 games. That’s not merely ace material, that’s Cooperstown stuff.
The Rangers hit spring training with their brand-new rotation and their legendary manager — and then the depth chart began to thin before the season even began. Odorizzi went down with a bum shoulder that ended up requiring season-ending surgery.
It was only the first such challenge for the Rangers.
Spring 2023
Losing Odorizzi stung, but the Rangers still had good rotation depth as the season began. They still had a dream October one-two punch in deGrom and Eovaldi — as long as they could get to October.
Then, on April 28, during a win over the New York Yankees, deGrom threw his last pitch of the season, leaving early because of two dreaded words: forearm tightness. He tried to work his way back, throwing a bullpen session in late May. In June, he underwent Tommy John surgery.
DeGrom had been the latest marquee free agent to be wooed by not just Davis’ dollars but also Young’s plans to build a sustainable contender. He was a big part of that plan, an irreplaceable component, if lost, from any team’s rotation.
Even when the roster-building plan is perfect, things go wrong. The ineffable quality of a championship team is something else, something more elusive. That something can be called clubhouse chemistry or team culture or what the players might call the “next-man-up mentality.” How you create it or how you even define it is hard to say, but invariably, a championship team is going to have it.
So how did the Rangers respond? By June 12, the date of deGrom’s surgery, Texas owned the second-best rotation ERA in baseball (3.38), leading all teams in innings from starters and ranking fourth in quality starts.
All of those measures remained strong through the All-Star break, partially because Eovaldi and Gray were pitching like All-Stars and because Dunning, who stepped into deGrom’s place in the rotation, owned a sub-3.00 ERA.
“A few guys go down, but you’ll have to face a little adversity in the season to have success,” said Eovaldi, a key member of the 2018 champion Boston Red Sox. “I feel that was one of our main things this year, we had a lot of key players, not just even pitchers, but a lot of guys step up when one of the guys went down and filled in the role nicely.”
It wasn’t just the pitching staff. In April, Seager turned up with a sore hamstring that kept him out of the lineup for several weeks. With deGrom ailing, as well, the Rangers were pressing ahead in the rugged AL West without their most talented pitcher and most talented hitters.
And what happened? Rookie Josh Jung, Bochy’s every-day third baseman from the outset, flourished, posting 12 homers and 37 RBIs by the end of May and diving around the field on defense, doing the best imitation he could of his historical hero, Brooks Robinson. Semien mashed too, and the Rangers went 20-13 during Seager’s lengthy absence, with utility player Ezequiel Duran hitting .305/.342/.533 during that time. Next man up, indeed.
By the All-Star break, the Rangers were leading the majors in runs.
“We’re just resilient,” Seager said. “We’ve talked about it all year. Just playing good baseball, trying to win series and having a pass-the-baton mentality. You don’t have to be the guy every night. It’s just kind of translated for us.”
Summer 2023
Eovaldi caught fire as the season progressed toward the All-Star break, establishing himself as a likely contender for the AL Cy Young Award.
Not surprisingly, that run started in the immediate aftermath of deGrom’s injury. On April 29, Eovaldi threw a three-hit shutout against the Yankees. From that game through July 18, his first start of the second half, Eovaldi went 9-1 with a 1.97 ERA. Ace stuff. Cy Young stuff.
Then Eovaldi also got hurt. During that July 18 start, he threw six shutout frames against the Tampa Bay Rays, but his velocity was down. A start was skipped. A forearm strain was reported. He didn’t pitch again until September.
When Eovaldi went down, Texas was 19 games over .500 and led the division by 4½ games with the trade deadline looming two weeks away. And then it all started to turn.
The star-starved rotation began to suffer, and the Rangers bled runs at an alarming rate. Texas lost its last three games going into deadline day. Their lead over archrival Houston had shrunk to one game.
So what happened? Young doubled and tripled down on an already expensive rotation, dealing for Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery. Rather than rest on the talent, Young made the Rangers one of the clear winners of deadline machinations.
“By the time we got to the deadline, we needed to readdress our rotation, so that’s what we did,” Young said, his matter-of-fact tone implying that every team goes out and trades for two All-Star starters midstream.
The Rangers won on deadline day, the first of eight straight victories. They won 12 of 14 overall to move a season-high 24 games over .500 by the middle of August. Things were good, with the new order suggested by the Rangers’ strong first half seemingly restored by Young’s characteristic aggression at the deadline.
As it turned out, the Rangers’ roller coaster was just starting to roll. After hitting that high point on Aug. 15, Texas lost nine straight (including twice to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the team they just vanquished in the Fall Classic). They fell into a tie in what had become a three-team struggle with the Astros and the Seattle Mariners.
The slump just kept getting worse. From Aug. 16 through Sept. 8, Texas lost 16 of 20. During those games, the Rangers’ staff put up a 6.33 ERA. Only four teams put a lower OPS at the plate. What had seemed like a surefire playoff spot was no longer assured.
Nothing was clicking. Bochy’s pitching staff was on fumes. It all came to a head during what Young refers to as “the disaster series.”
Houston was in town. Despite the Rangers’ slump, they were still in good position, and a strong series against the Astros not only would put Houston in a major hole, but it could restore some of the Rangers’ earlier momentum.
Over the next three days, despite Eovaldi’s return to action and a marquee matchup that pitted Scherzer against Justin Verlander, Houston outscored the Rangers 39-10, a frightening differential that looks even worse when you consider that Texas led the first game 3-0 at one point.
Injuries (including to Jonah Heim and Jung) played a big part in the skid, but Texas looked very much like a team that had fallen into an irreversible spiral.
There was no one moment that pulled it out. Texas started to get healthier, at least on offense, though Scherzer was lost with a shoulder injury that everyone thought would end his season. Young called up top prospect Evan Carter. Eovaldi began to round into form. Montgomery performed like the top-of-the-rotation starter Texas badly needed. The Rangers won six straight and regained their lead in the AL West.
“I think we had to deal with more this year than any year I’ve ever had to manage,” Bochy said. “And that’s what makes me proud of these guys too, how they were focused on that as much as, hey, let’s focus forward. And they kept doing that.”
Carter was a revelation almost from the start, hitting .306/.413/.645 down the stretch while flashing plus speed on basepaths and defense in the outfield. The system Young had bet on was paying off again.
So too was the Rangers’ emergent clubhouse culture where in a room peopled by some of the game’s biggest stars, rookies like Carter and Jung and reinforcements like Duran and Travis Jankowski felt right at home. Next man up, yes, but it was every man up, as well.
“It shows that no matter who we have on the field, we’re going to compete,” Carter said. “A team like us, we’ve got the Coreys, the Marcuses that are so high up there in the baseball world, it’s kind of easy to overlook the other people who are really good contributors. Obviously, Corey and Marcus are huge reasons for our success, but at the same time, we had people come in and contribute in all kinds of ways.”
October 2023
The Rangers had an up-and-down finish to the regular season and missed a chance to win the AL West outright by dropping a 1-0 game in Seattle on the season’s final day. They tied the Astros for the division lead, but Houston owned the tiebreaker (in part because of the disaster series).
Instead of resting at home in the wild-card round, Texas boarded a plane in Seattle, enduring one of baseball’s longest flights: across the continent for a winner-takes-all series against the Rays in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The Rangers took two straight and swept the Rays then won two on the road against the Baltimore Orioles in the next round. By Game 3 of the ALCS, the Rangers had played only one game at home — and had won every single away game they played in three other cities.
There were still more setbacks at the very end of the Rangers’ run. Adolis Garcia, who along with Seager powered Texas’ offense in October, was lost to an oblique injury suffered in Game 3 of the World Series. Scherzer, who shockingly returned during the ALCS, had his back lock up in the same game.
Both players were removed from the Texas roster simultaneously before Game 4 against the Diamondbacks.
And what happened? Bolstered by an emotional pregame speech by the devastated Garcia, the Rangers clubbed Arizona 11-7 in Game 4 and finished off the Snakes in Game 5. Injury after injury, setback after setback, this was one rapid rebuild that was not going to be denied.
Young, a native of the Dallas area and a former Rangers player, had delivered the franchise’s first title. Bochy had won his fourth. While you can look at the splashy free agent signings and the stars acquired through trade, moves that had Seager and Semien and Eovaldi and Scherzer and deGrom and Garcia dancing around the same clubhouse with Jankowski and Jung and Carter and everyone else, what is perhaps most impressive is not how quickly the talent was gathered but how quickly that elusive thing — chemistry, comradery, culture, next-man-upness, whatever you want to call it — became this team’s manna, the fuel that helped the Rangers overcome more than their fair share of roadblocks.
If everyone else was praising Young, he seemed too busy praising everyone else to notice.
It was the vision of Ray Davis and Jon Daniels that got this thing in motion,” Young said. “And then from there, the rest of it goes to these players and the coaching staff.
It was the team Young built, in his first full season as Texas’ lead exec. Not a bad bit of work for a guy who was pitching in the majors just a few years ago. Even when he was still hurling for Moore’s teams in Kansas City, capturing a World Series crown in 2015, the Royals’ title-winning GM knew Young had future exec written all over him.
“Everybody talks about how smart C.Y. is, but he’s got emotional intelligence too,” Moore said. “You have to have a natural love and passion for this game, which he does. You have to have baseball wisdom, which he does. And then you also have to love people. He has all three, and he has a great work ethic. I think he’s got a chance to do this successfully for a long time.”
Young and his team have a tough act to follow after Wednesday, but one thing is certain: They aren’t going to get tired of winning any time soon.
The NHL’s board of governors and the NHLPA’s membership have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement. The current CBA runs through the end of the 2025-26 season, with the new one carrying through the end of the 2029-30 season.
While the continuation of labor peace is the most important development for a league that has endured multiple work stoppages this millennium, there are a number of wrinkles that are noteworthy to fans.
ESPN reporters Ryan S. Clark, Kristen Shilton and Greg Wyshynski break it all down for you here:
Draft recap: All 224 picks
Grades for all 32 teams
Winners and losers
When does this new CBA take effect?
The new NHL CBA is set to begin on Sept. 16, 2026 and runs through Sept. 15, 2030. Including the coming season, that gives the NHL five years of labor peace, and would make the fastest both sides have reached an extension in Gary Bettman’s tenure as NHL commissioner.
It’s also the first major negotiation for NHLPA head Marty Walsh, who stepped into the executive director role in 2023 — Shilton
What are the big differences in the new CBA compared to the current one?
There are a few major headlines from the new CBA.
First are the schedule changes: the league will move to an 84-game regular season, with a shortened preseason (a maximum of four games), so each team is still able to play every opponent while divisional rivals have four games against one another every other season.
There will also be alterations to contract lengths, going to a maximum seven-year deal instead of the current eight-year mark; right now, a player can re-sign for eight years with his own team or seven with another in free agency, while the new CBA stipulates it’ll be seven or six years, respectively.
Deferred salaries will also be on the way out. And there will be a new position established for a team’s full-time emergency backup goaltender — or EBUG — where that player can practice and travel with the team.
The CBA also contains updated language on long-term injured reserve and how it can be used, particularly when it comes to adding players from LTIR to the roster for the postseason — Shilton
What’s the motivation for an 84-game season?
The new CBA expands the regular season to 84 games and reduces the exhibition season to four games per team. Players with 100 games played in their NHL careers can play in a maximum of two exhibition games. Players who competed in at least 50 games in the previous season will have a maximum of 13 days of training camp.
The NHL had an 84-game season from 1992 to 1994, when the league and NHLPA agreed to add two neutral-site games to every team’s schedule. But since 1995-96, every full NHL regular season has been 82 games.
For at least the past four years, the league has had internal discussions about adding two games to the schedule while decreasing the preseason. The current CBA restricted teams from playing more than 82 games, so expansion of the regular season required collective bargaining.
There was a functional motivation behind the increase in games: Currently, each team plays either three or four games against divisional opponents, for a total of 26 games; they play three games against non-divisional teams within their own conference, for a total of 24 games; and they play two games, home and away, against opponents from the other conference for a total of 32 games. Adding two games would allow teams to even out their divisional schedule, while swapping in two regular-season games — with regular-season crowd sizes and prices — for two exhibition games.
The reduction of the preseason would also give the NHL the chance to start the regular season earlier, perhaps in the last week of September. Obviously, given the grind of the current regular season and the playoffs, there’s concern about wear and tear on the players with two additional games. But the reduction of training camp and the exhibition season was appealing to players, and they signed off on the 84-game season in the new CBA. — Wyshynski
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How do the new long-term injured reserve rules work?
The practice of teams using long-term injured reserve (LTIR) to create late-season salary cap space — only to have the injured player return for the first game of the playoffs after sitting out game No. 82 of the regular season — tracks back to 2015. That’s when the Chicago Blackhawks used an injured Patrick Kane‘s salary cap space to add players at the trade deadline. Kane returned for the start of the first round, and eventually won the Conn Smythe as playoff MVP in their Stanley Cup win.
Since then, the NHL has seen teams such as the Tampa Bay Lightning (Nikita Kucherov 2020-21), Vegas Golden Knights (Mark Stone, 2023), Florida Panthers (Matthew Tkachuk, 2024) also use LTIR to their advantage en route to Stanley Cup wins.
The NHL has investigated each occurrence of teams using LTIR and then having players return for the playoffs, finding nothing actionable — although the league is currently investigating the Edmonton Oilers use of LTIR for Evander Kane, who sat out the regular season and returned in the first round of the most recent postseason.
Last year, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said that if “the majority” of general managers wanted a change to this practice, the NHL would consider it. Some players weren’t happy about the salary cap loophole.
Ron Hainsey, NHLPA assistant executive director, said during the Stanley Cup Final that players have expressed concern at different times “either public or privately” about misuse of long-term injured reserve. He said that the NHL made closing that loophole “a priority for them” in labor talks.
Under the new CBA, the total salary and bonuses for “a player or players” that have replaced a player on LTIR may not exceed the amount of total salary and bonuses of the player they are replacing. For example: In 2024, the Golden Knights put winger Stone and his $9.5 million salary on LTIR, given that he was out because of a lacerated spleen. The Golden Knights added $10.8 million in salary to their cap before the trade deadline in defenseman Noah Hanifin and forwards Tomas Hertl and Anthony Mantha.
But the bigger tweak to the LTIR rule states that “the average amounts of such replacement player(s) may not exceed the prior season’s average league salary.” According to PuckPedia, the average player salary last season was $3,817,293, for example.
The CBA does allow an exception to these LTIR rules, with NHL and NHLPA approval, based on how much time the injured player is likely to miss. Teams can exceed these “average amounts,” but the injured player would be ineligible to return that season or in the postseason.
But the NHL and NHLPA doubled-down on discouraging teams from abusing LTIR to go over the salary cap in the Stanley Cup playoffs by establishing “playoff cap counting” for the first time. — Wyshynski
What is ‘playoff cap counting’ and how will it affect the postseason?
In 2021, the Carolina Hurricanes lost to Tampa Bay in the Eastern Conference playoffs. That’s when defenseman Dougie Hamilton famously lamented that his team fell to a Lightning squad “that’s $18 million over the cap or whatever they are,” as Tampa Bay used Kucherov’s LTIR space in the regular season before he returned for the playoffs.
Even more famously, Kucherov wore a T-shirt that read “$18M OVER THE CAP” during their Stanley Cup championship celebration.
The NHL and NHLPA have attempted to put an end to this creative accounting — in combination with the new LTIR rules in the regular season — through a new CBA provision called “playoff cap counting.”
By 3 p.m. local time or five hours before a playoff game — whatever is earlier — teams will submit a roster of 18 players and two goaltenders to NHL Central Registry. There will be a “playoff playing roster averaged club salary” calculated for that roster that must be under the “upper limit” of the salary cap for that team. The “averaged club salary” is the sum of the face value averaged amounts of the player salary and bonuses for that season for each player on the roster, and all amounts charged to the team’s salary cap.
Teams can make changes to their rosters after that day’s deadline, provided they’ve cleared it with NHL Central Registry.
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The “upper limit” for an individual team is the leaguewide salary cap ceiling minus any cap penalties for contract buyouts; 35-plus players or players with one-way contracts demoted to the minor leagues; retained salary in trades; cap recapture penalties; or contract grievance settlements.
The cap compliance is only for the players participating in a given postseason game. As one NHL player agent told ESPN: “You can have $130 million in salaries on your total roster once the playoffs start, but the 18 players and two goalies that are on the ice must be cap-compliant.”
These rules will be in effect for the first two seasons of the new CBA (2026-28). After that, either the NHL or the NHLPA can reopen this section of the CBA for “good faith discussions about the concerns that led to the election to reopen and whether these rules could be modified in a manner that would effectively address such concerns.”
If there’s no resolution of those concerns, the “playoff cap counting” will remain in place for the 2028-29 season. — Wyshynski
Did the NHL CBA make neck guards mandatory?
Professional leagues around the world have adjusted their player equipment protection standards since Adam Johnson’s death in October 2023. Johnson, 29, was playing for the Nottingham Panthers of England’s Elite Ice Hockey League when he suffered a neck laceration from an opponent’s skate blade.
The AHL mandated cut-resistant neck protection for players and officials for the 2024-25 season. The IIHF did the same for international tournaments, while USA Hockey required all players under the age of 18 to wear them.
Now, the NHL and NHLPA have adjusted their standards for neck protection in the new CBA.
Beginning with the 2026-27 season, players who have zero games of NHL experience will be required to wear “cut-resistant protection on the neck area with a minimum cut level protection score of A5.” The ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 Standard rates neck guards on a scale from A1 to A9, and players are encouraged to seek out neck protection that’s better than the minimal requirement.
Players with NHL experience prior to the 2026-27 season will not be required to wear neck protection. — Wyshynski
What’s the new player dress code?
The NHL and NHLPA agreed that teams will no longer be permitted “to propose any rules concerning player dress code.”
Under the previous CBA, the NHL was the only North American major men’s pro sports league with a dress code specified through collective bargaining. Exhibit 14, Rule 5 read: “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.”
That rule was deleted in the new CBA.
The only requirement now for players is that they “dress in a manner that is consistent with contemporary fashion norms.”
Sorry, boys: No toga parties on game days. — Wyshynski
Does the new CBA cover the Olympics beyond 2026?
Yes. The NHL and NHLPA have committed to participate in the 2030 Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in the French Alps. As usual, the commitment is ” subject to negotiation of terms acceptable to each of the NHL, NHLPA, IIHF and/or IOC.”
And as we saw with the 2022 Beijing Games, having a commitment in the CBA doesn’t guarantee NHL players on Olympic ice. — Wyshynski
Did the NHL end three-team salary retention trades?
It has become an NHL trade deadline tradition. One team retains salary on a player so he can fit under another team’s salary cap. But to make the trade happen, those teams invite a third team to the table to retain even more of that salary to make it work.
Like when the Lightning acquired old friend Yanni Gourde from the Seattle Kraken last season. Gourde made $5,166,667 against the cap. Seattle traded him to Detroit for defenseman Kyle Aucoin, and the Kraken retained $2,583,334 in salary. The Red Wings then retained $1,291,667 of Gourde’s salary in sending him to Tampa Bay for a fourth-round pick, allowing the Lightning to fit him under their cap.
Though the NHL will still allow retained salary transactions, there’s now a mandatory waiting period until that player’s salary can be retained in a second transaction. A second retained salary transaction may not occur within 75 regular-season days of the first retained salary transaction.
Days outside of the regular-season schedule do not count toward the required 75 regular-season days, and therefore the restriction might span multiple seasons, according to the CBA. — Wyshynski
Can players now endorse alcoholic beverages?
Yes. The previous CBA banned players from any endorsement or sponsorship of alcoholic beverages. That has been taken out of the new CBA. If only Bob Beers were still playing …
While players remain prohibited from any endorsement or sponsorship of tobacco products, a carryover from the previous CBA, they’re also banned from endorsement or sponsorship of “cannabis (including CBD) products.” — Wyshynski
What are the new parameters for Emergency Goaltender Replacement?
The NHL is making things official with the emergency backup goaltender (EBUG) position.
In the past, that third goalie spot went to someone hanging out in the arena during a game, ready to jump in for either team if both of their own goaltenders were injured or fell ill during the course of play. Basically, it was a guy in street clothes holding onto the dream of holding down an NHL crease.
Now, the league has given permanent status to the EBUG role. That player will travel with and practice for only one club. But there are rules involved in their employment.
This CBA designates that to serve as a team’s emergency goaltender replacement, the individual cannot have played an NHL game under an NHL contract, appeared in more than 80 professional hockey games, have been in professional hockey within the previous three seasons, have a contractual obligation that would prevent them from fulfilling their role as the EBUG or be on the reserve or restricted free agent list of an NHL club.
Teams must submit one designated EBUG 48 hours before the NHL regular season starts. During the season, teams can declare that player 24 hours before a game. — Shilton
What’s the deal with eliminating deferred salaries?
The new CBA will prohibit teams from brokering deferred salary arrangements, meaning players will be paid in full during the contract term lengths. This is meant to save players from financial uncertainty and makes for simplified contract structures with the club.
There are examples of players who had enormous signing bonuses paid up front or had structured their deals to include significant payouts when they ended. Both tactics could serve to lower an individual’s cap hit over the life of a deal. Now that won’t be an option for teams or players to use in negotiations. — Shilton
What’s different about contract lengths?
Starting under the new CBA, the maximum length of a player contract will go from eight years to seven years if he’s re-signing with the same club, and down to just six years (from the current seven) if he signs with a new team.
So, for example, a player coming off his three-year, entry-level contract could re-sign only with that same team for up to seven years, and he’ll become an unrestricted free agent sooner than the current agreement would allow.
This could benefit teams that have signed players to long-term contracts that didn’t age well (for whatever reason) as they won’t be tied as long to that decision. And for players, it can help preserve some of their prime years if they want to move on following a potential 10 (rather than 11) maximum seasons with one club. — Shilton
What does the new league minimum salary look like? How does it compare to the other men’s professional leagues?
Under the new CBA, the minimum salary for an NHL player will rise from $775,000 to $1 million by the end of the four-year agreement. Although gradual, it is a significant rise for a league in which the salary cap presents more challenges compared to its counterparts.
For example, the NHL will see its salary cap rise to $95.5 million in 2025-26, compared to that of the NFL in which Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott’s highest three-year average is $61.6 million.
So how does the new NHL minimum salary upon the CBA’s completion compare to its counterparts in the Big 4?
The NBA league minimum for the 2025-26 season is $1.4 million for a rookie, while players with more than 10 years can earn beyond $3.997 million in a league that has a maximum of 15 roster spots
The NFL, which has a 53-player roster, has a league minimum of $840,000 for rookies in 2025, while a veteran with more than seven years will earn $1.255 million.
MLB’s CBA, which expires after the 2026 season, has the minimum salary for the 2025 season set at $760,000, and that figure increases to $780,000 next season. — Clark
Is this Gary Bettman’s final CBA as commissioner?
Possibly. The Athletic reported in January that the board of governors had begun planning for Bettman’s eventual retirement “in a couple of years,” while starting the process to find his successor.
Bettman became the NHL’s first commissioner in 1993, and has the distinction of being the longest-serving commissioner among the four major men’s professional leagues in North America. He is also the oldest. Bettman turned 73 in June, while contemporaries Roger Goodell, Rob Manfred and Adam Silver are all in their early- to mid-60s.
That’s not to suggest he couldn’t remain in place. There is a precedent of commissioners across those leagues who remained in those respective roles into their 70s. Ford Frick, who served as the third commissioner of MLB, was 71 when he stepped down in 1965. There are more recent examples than Frick, as former NBA commissioner David Stern stepping down in 2014 when he was 71, and former MLB commissioner Bud Selig stepped down in 2015 at age 80. — Clark
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Former Michigan football staff member Connor Stalions, whose actions triggered an NCAA investigation into sign-stealing, says he knew almost every signal opponents used in seven games over two seasons.
Stalions shared those details Saturday on social media, responding to TCU coach Sonny Dykes telling On3 that his team changed some signs in advance of its win over the Wolverines in the 2022 College Football semifinals.
“We got some favorable matchups because of that and, yeah, there was some big plays in the game,” Dykes said in the On3 report.
Stalions bristled at the latest attempt to suggest Michigan won or lost games because of his sign-stealing role with the team.
“There were 7 games in my time at Michigan where I knew almost every signal the whole game: 2021 MSU, 2022 MSU, 2022 PSU, 2022 OSU, 2022 TCU, 2021 Georgia, and 2021 Wisconsin,” Stalions wrote in his post. “We lost 3 of those games because we didn’t tackle well, and Georgia was historically good. We won the four other games because we dominated the line of scrimmage & tackled well. Blocking, ball security, tackling, run fits & coverage tools.
“That’s football. This is not rocket science.”
Nearly a year ago, the NCAA alleged in a notice relating to Michigan’s sign-stealing investigation that current coach Sherrone Moore violated rules as an assistant under former coach Jim Harbaugh, who served a three-game suspension in exchange for the Big Ten dropping its own investigation into the allegations after the two ended up in court.
Moore also was accused of deleting text messages with Stalions, before they were recovered and provided to the NCAA. Moore has said he has and will continue to cooperate with the NCAA’s investigation.
Michigan is prepared to suspend Moore for two games during the coming season. The NCAA will decide if that self-imposed sanction is enough to address allegations that Moore failed to cooperate in an investigation that rocked college football during the 2023 championship season with Harbaugh on the sideline.
The school had a hearing with the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions last month. The governing body takes three months on average for contested cases to make a final decision.
The Wolverines open the season on Aug. 30 at home against New Mexico State and then go to Oklahoma, where Moore played as an offensive lineman, on Sept. 6.
The NCAA does not have rules against stealing signs, but it does prohibit schools from sending scouts to the games of future opponents and using electronic equipment to record another team’s signals. Records from other Big Ten schools showed that Stalions bought tickets to games involving future opponents, sending people to digitally record teams when they signaled plays.
Stalions initially was placed on leave by Michigan and later resigned. He did not participate in the NCAA investigation.
The NCAA previously put Michigan on three years of probation, fined the school and implemented recruiting limits after reaching a negotiated resolution in a recruiting case and banned Harbaugh from coaching college football for four years.
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