‘I feel like I have everything in front of me’: Inside the $765 million marriage of Juan Soto and the Mets
IN THE BACKYARD of his 11,540-square-foot Beverly Hills mansion, next to the saltwater pool with an underwater sound system, Steve Cohen was talking about building things. Trying to construct something great nearly broke him once. The hedge fund Cohen founded made him one of the richest men in the world, and insider trading from two employees led to a $1.8 billion fine and the dissolution of the business. Cohen was being transparent, more than someone in his position might otherwise, because he wanted the man sitting next to him to understand that work ethic and drive and sacrifice and the pursuit of excellence are building blocks for something bigger, something that lasts — something that can change lives. As he locked eyes with Juan Soto, who stared back at him, rapt, Cohen posed a question.
“What are your aspirations?”
Soto paused to think. He had made a career out of careful consideration. No baseball player in his generation, and scant few before him, wielded such immaculate control over his own decision-making skills. From the time he debuted at 19 years old, Soto had launched himself on a trajectory toward the Hall of Fame in large part because of his mastery of the strike zone. He has the ability to process information so fast that to him the half-second between the time a pitcher releases the ball and when it pops into the catcher’s mitt feels like an eternity. It carried Soto out of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and all the way here, to California’s 90210 ZIP code, where Cohen, the wealthiest owner in baseball, was trying to convince him to sign with the New York Mets.
The answer was multipronged. Soto wanted to win championships, plural, and he wanted to win a Gold Glove in the outfield, and he wanted to do a million other things, because he wasn’t in the business of restricting himself. What he said next aligned with that.
“I want to be the best hitter of all time,” Soto said.
More than 17,500 players have stepped into a major league batter’s box. Soto’s suggestion that he wanted to stand atop that list took hubris, but Cohen gleaned something else from Soto’s words. He saw a kindred spirit, a perfect embodiment of what he wanted his Mets to be. The franchise had spent most of its 64-year existence bumbling along, while the New York Yankees, for whom Soto played in 2024, won championship after championship. Now, Cohen believes the Mets have finally replaced decades of amateur-hour mismanagement with a functional group of leaders — and created a franchise that any free agent would choose over the 29 other clubs. Particularly a 26-year-old in search of his forever home.
Cohen sat at the head of the outdoor table, flanked by Soto to his left and the Mets’ new president of baseball operations, David Stearns, to his right. Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, sat next to him and across from Alex Cohen, Steve’s wife. Her father, 93-year-old Ralph Garcia, a Mets fan for decades, showed up to the meeting, as did Cohen’s son, Josh. The attendees reinforced a point Cohen wanted to emphasize: The Mets might function around the principles embodied by Cohen’s hedge funds, but at its heart, theirs is a family business. For hours they talked, enjoying Dominican food, making sure that this seemingly perfect match of team and player was as substantive in person as it was in the computer models that suggested Cohen spend more money to secure Soto’s services than had ever been guaranteed to a professional athlete.
For the entirety of Cohen’s adult life, he had assessed the value of financial products and leveraged them to inconceivable riches. This deal was value anthropomorphized, an opportunity for something bigger, lasting, life-changing — delivering a moment decades in the making for Ralph and the other Mets diehards and all of Queens. And Cohen intended to finish the meeting with a flourish. He told the group to follow him to the theater room downstairs.
On the way, Cohen told a story. He is one of the world’s great art collectors, and one piece in particular enraptured him: Picasso’s Le Rêve. Las Vegas casino magnate Steve Wynn owned it, and Cohen had agreed to purchase it in 2006 for $139 million. Then Wynn accidentally elbowed a hole through it, scuttling the sale. One restoration and seven years later, Cohen bought the piece for $155 million.
The point, Cohen said, was that when he sees something he wants, nothing will stop him from getting it. With that, the lights in the theater dimmed, and a video started to play. Josh Cohen had devised it. Soto in a Mets uniform. Soto at Citi Field. And at the end, next to the statue of Tom Seaver that adorns the outside of Citi Field, a large, bronze version of Soto. He could stay with the Yankees or go to Los Angeles or Boston or Toronto, sure, but nowhere, Cohen said, would he change the arc of baseball history like he would with the Mets.
TWO MONTHS AFTER signing the largest contract in the history of professional sports, a tectonic 15-year, $765 million deal with no deferred money, Juan Soto was ready to report to New York Mets spring training. And he was nervous. His jitters were more the first-day-of-school variety than anything, but in the time between when he agreed to the deal and mid-February, Soto considered the gravity of what he soon would undertake. His career was his most valuable possession, and he was entrusting it in an organization that for its six-plus decades of existence earned a reputation for brokenness.
“I feel like I have everything in front of me,” Soto said. “I just gotta put the work in and do what I have to do. It’s going to take a lot, but I think when you put the bar that high and you put your goals in a big spot, it brings the best out of you, and that’s what I want to bring every day.”
What for most of baseball history would have seemed inconceivable was now a reality: a future Hall of Famer in the prime of his career fleeing the Bronx for Queens. For the better part of a century, Yankee Stadium had functioned as baseball mecca, the place where the best players found the best of themselves. From 1921 to 2009, they won the American League pennant nearly half the time and captured 27 World Series championships, more than twice as many as the next-best franchise. The baseball universe orbited around East 161st Street and River Avenue.
The Mets weren’t just little brother; they were the distant step-cousin. They didn’t spend like the Yankees. They didn’t develop like the Yankees. The Yankees’ brand was greatness, the Mets’ dysfunction. Even when they cobbled together a championship-caliber core in the 1980s, the Mets’ reign stopped at one championship, in 1986, dreams of a dynasty dashed. Little changed until Cohen, who grew up in Great Neck, about 10 miles from Citi Field, arrived. He saw the Mets not only as an undervalued asset but a loom that could weave the social fabric of Queens and regions beyond. And for all the money he planned to spend to make that happen, the Mets needed an anchor, a face, a defining character for the franchise’s defining era.
Though plenty of talented baseball players have plied their trade for the Mets, none has matched Soto’s luminescence. He is coming off the best year of his career, hitting .288/.419/.569 with 41 home runs. His lifetime on-base percentage of .421 is 13th among all players with at least 2,000 plate appearances in the modern era, sandwiched between Shoeless Joe Jackson and Mickey Mantle. And at 26, plenty of prime years remain for Soto to help reinvent the Mets in his image — on-field alphas, shuffling in the batter’s box, staring down pitchers — saying they’re the ones who own New York now without needing to open their mouths.
On that first day, all Soto wanted to do was fit in. His first seven years in the major leagues were unlike those of any player of his caliber in the game’s history. Superstars rarely get traded before they reach free agency; none moves more than once. Soto had gone from Washington, which signed him as a gangly 16-year-old, to San Diego, which regarded him as the missing piece to winning its first championship, to the Bronx, where the Yankees paired him with Aaron Judge to fashion a fearsome duo in the image of Ruth and Gehrig, Mantle and Maris.
Soto pulled in to Port St. Lucie, Florida, with no specific plan to ingratiate himself. Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, who had been hired before their surprising National League Championship Series run last year after 15 years managing and coaching with the Yankees, encouraged Soto to ignore the fact that he’d now be viewed through a different lens than the previous half-decade. Though his talent had always set Soto apart, now he was the $765 million man, and even if the money would not change him, it would alter the perception of him.
“I just bring myself. This is who I am. I hope you guys like it,” Soto said. “I’m going to try my best. If not, I’m going to make adjustments. That’s what I did. I didn’t have any strategy. ‘Oh, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.’ I don’t want to change anything. This is who I am, and this is the guy you’re going to see for the next 15 years.
“I don’t want to try to do more. I don’t want to try to be a superhero. I’m just going to be the same guy I’ve been.”
Whatever Soto does or doesn’t want to try to be, he’s wise enough to recognize that to Mets fans he’s Superman, Batman and Captain America amalgamated. Once he arrived at camp, fans started showing up in droves — thousands on the backfields, plenty wearing Soto’s No. 22, craving just a peek at the one prophesied to liberate them from the shackles of their history. Being a Mets fan is a lesson in second-class citizenry, and with Soto in the fold, it mattered not that their presumed Opening Day starter, Sean Manaea, would miss the beginning of the season, or that another free agent signing, right-hander Frankie Montas, would be out for two months with a lat strain. Soto’s presence alone made the sun shine a little brighter, the bat crack a little louder, the loaded NL East — with Atlanta and Philadelphia teams also harboring World Series aspirations — a little less intimidating.
“At the beginning, I didn’t know what to expect, especially with Soto,” Mendoza said. “That was the biggest thing for me: the guy that’s been around a lot of different teams, but he’s making that transition to another New York team with a huge contract. So how is that going to go here? And I think it was Day 2 of position players [reporting]. I saw him joking around, smiling, laughing. I was like, ‘OK, I think we’re good here.'”
Soto made clear to Mendoza that the size of his contract would be no impediment to him fulfilling all of the goals he told Cohen. “He wants to be held accountable,” Mendoza said, and if that meant getting on him about his defense or baserunning or being a good teammate or even his hitting, he expected the same treatment as someone making $765,000.
Earlier this spring, the Mets set up an optional bunting station that hitters could visit to work on their technique. Perhaps no one should have been surprised that Soto ambled over and spent 15 minutes there. He is an excellent bunter who stole four hits last year pushing the ball away from shifted fielders. But a number of people in the Mets organization were nevertheless pleasantly surprised: If the highest-paid player in sports history can work on rarely used fundamentals, what is anyone else’s excuse to skip the bunting station?
Divas can poison cultures, and the shift in the Mets’ since Cohen bought the team — the hiring of Stearns, who made the playoffs in five of eight years as general manager for the payroll-challenged Milwaukee Brewers, and the immediate success of Mendoza, a first-time big league manager — is fundamental to the Mets’ reimagination. Without a solid foundation, a team filled with nine-figure players would be susceptible to wobble. Organizational sturdiness can help make the complicated seamless.
“We saw it last year with the Dodgers getting Shohei,” said Manaea, who played with Soto in 2022 with San Diego and witnessed firsthand last year how adding one of the best players in baseball can take an already good team and turn it into something special. Los Angeles blitzed the Mets in the NLCS, with Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ $700 million free agent signing, getting on base 17 times in six games and blasting a pair of home runs. What Ohtani is to the Dodgers, Soto can be for the Mets. And his desire for that — for everything baseball has to offer — helped guide him toward that ultimate decision.
JUST BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Soto wrapped up his in-person meetings with the five teams courting him and started to confer with his family, Boras and Boras’ lieutenants. Quickly, he realized he had absolutely no idea where he wanted to spend the remainder of his career. He was most impressed by the Mets’ meeting. The Blue Jays wowed him as well. The Red Sox’s cadre of prospects foretold a bright future. The Dodgers were the industry standard. And he loved playing for the Yankees, whose fans had spent much of the season and October rhythmically chanting “Re-sign So-to,” a clarion call for owner Hal Steinbrenner to channel the energy of his late father, George, and treat the team less as a business and more as a win-at-all-costs championship factory.
“It was a lot of meetings, a lot of back and forth looking at the teams,” Soto said. “What is going to be the best? Who’s going to be at the top for the next 15 years? Who’s going to be willing to spend money after five, six, seven, 10 years?”
The pressure was understandable. Soto had been barreling toward this moment for years. He turned down three contract-extension offers from the Nationals — the first for $100 million-plus, the second a near-facsimile of Fernando Tatis Jr.’s $340 million deal with San Diego and the final a 14-year, $440 million offer that would have made him at the time the highest-paid player in baseball history at 23 years old. He vowed to prioritize fit over money, not because he didn’t care about the economics of the deal but because Boras assured him that eventually the bidding would reach levels never before seen in sports.
At the center of the fit was family — literally, with his parents and siblings deeply involved in his decision, and colloquially, with the length of his expected deal tantamount to a marriage. Soto was raised in a household, said his younger brother, Elian, where they were taught to “be respectful and be nice to everyone — to the game, to the coaches, to our teammates. And try to be as positive as we can on and off the field.”
Cohen’s bet on involving his family in the meeting proved spot-on. Soto saw Cohen not only as a billionaire who was willing to devote the necessary resources to building a team to compete with Los Angeles, but as a husband with the means to give his father-in-law the gift of winning. As much as Soto liked the Dodgers, they were the one team unwilling to match the others financially, with Ohtani’s contract already on their books. As engaging as the Blue Jays were in their meeting — with a video nearly as resonant as the Mets’ and the presence of Edward Rogers, the team owner who never before had involved himself in these sorts of summits — their farm system lagged far enough behind that he eliminated them. And though Boston expressed a willingness to go well beyond $765 million, the Red Sox never made a formal offer in that range, and Soto removed them from the proceedings, too. The biggest free agent contract in MLB history was officially a battle between the two New York teams.
Among the pros for the Mets: Soto believed he could create something bigger, something that lasts, something that would change lives and legacies. For the Yankees: He had grown weary of baseball nomadism, and the Yankees, for all of the consternation among a fan base aggrieved by the lack of championships since 2009, still have the most wins of any team this century and the third most in Major League Baseball over the past decade.
Sensing the endgame, Cohen requested, and was granted, a second meeting right before the beginning of the winter meetings in early December — an opportunity only the Mets received. (The Red Sox had inquired about one but Soto did not take it.) At a lunch gathering at his home in Boca Raton, Florida, Cohen went into dealmaking mode, asking: What do we need to do to get this done? More power in the lineup, Soto said. More pitching, he added. Already Cohen had promised Soto a luxury suite for every home game — a perk the Yankees declined to match — and a security detail for him and his family. And the money kept rising — to $750 million first and eventually to $765 million, $5 million more than the Yankees’ final offer spread over 16 years.
Back at home in the Dominican Republic, Soto vacillated until Sunday afternoon, as much of baseball arrived in Dallas for the meetings. As tantalizing as it would be to go down in the annals of the sport as an all-time-great Yankee, the allure of Cohen’s commitment to build something spoke to Soto. He was far from the highest-rated prospect in his international signing class. Soto, in fact, originally saw himself as a pitcher. But he added skills, iterated, grew, worked, pushed himself, sacrificed, pursued excellence. The kindred spirit Cohen saw was reciprocated.
Hours later, as the news emerged that Soto had chosen the Mets and the $765 million figure was reported, the long-established dichotomy of New York baseball was flipped. The eternal winners lost the sweepstakes; the perpetual losers won the lottery. This did not mean failure for the Yankees, just as it does not ensure success for the Mets, but paradigm shifts in baseball can happen in a hurry, and Soto’s decision represented one. For all he has done — the World Series win in Washington, the exceptional October with the Yankees and everything in between — his career is still in its nascent stages. So much is yet to come. And when it does, it will be with the New York Mets.
THE BEST HITTER of all time is Babe Ruth. Or Barry Bonds. Or Ted Williams. Or Ty Cobb or Henry Aaron or Willie Mays or Rogers Hornsby or dozens of others whose accomplishments, to this point in his career, dwarf Juan Soto’s.
And yet when asked the question of who warrants the title, Soto does not hesitate.
“Myself,” Soto said. “Until you prove me wrong.”
When pressed, Soto’s answer offers a window into how he sees the sport.
“Freddie Freeman,” Soto said. “I feel like he’s one of the best hitters I’ve ever seen. There’s a lot of guys that have (long) careers like (Albert) Pujols. Mike Trout has been having great years. But the guy I see every day since I’ve been in the big league has been Freddie Freeman.”
Soto’s answers, heavily skewed to active players, are not because he’s some myopic Zoomer with no knowledge of the game’s history. He knows it well. He values the greats. At the same time, it speaks to his reverence for the modern game. Hitting today is harder than it’s ever been, and Freeman almost single-handedly beat the Yankees in the World Series. There might be no prettier swing in baseball than Freeman’s when stroking an outside pitch to the opposite field. Soto deeply values being on the field, playing all 162 games in 2023 and 157 last year, and Freeman is the king of staying on the field, ailments be damned.
For Soto to enter the GOAT conversation among the general public, he’ll need more years like 2024, when he spent the season hitting second for the Yankees, one spot ahead of Aaron Judge. The Mets lineup he’s joining will be even more formidable than the Yankees’, with Francisco Lindor in the leadoff spot and Pete Alonso behind him. Add Brandon Nimmo at cleanup, Mark Vientos in the 5-hole and a variety of other dangerous bats occupying the bottom half of the lineup, and the Mets will need to hit as they await the return of Manaea, Montas, catcher Francisco Alvarez and second baseman Jeff McNeil from the injured list.
How the Mets evolve beyond 2025 will depend on the growth of their farm system — it’s currently a middle-of-the-pack group — and Cohen’s continued willingness to complement Soto and Lindor, the Mets’ two anchors. Replicating the Dodgers’ formula will take years, but their success begins with Mookie Betts, Ohtani and Freeman — all future Hall of Famers — atop the lineup. The vibe that helped fuel the Mets last October, Lindor said, is back this spring, and Soto’s addition to the lineup should only serve as accelerant.
“I’m happy he’s here,” Lindor said. “I think he’s definitely going to help us win. Why would I be mad? He’s putting our team in a much better spot. … My ego doesn’t get hurt when somebody big in this game walks in. It’s just like, I love it.”
He’s not the only one. In the stands at a game last week, Mets fans lined up along the dugout as Soto spent an inning autographing balls and jerseys for anyone who asked. Inside the clubhouse a few days earlier, Mets players were thrilled that Soto’s partnership with Call of Duty: Warzone allowed the team early access to a not-yet-released version of the Verdansk map. At the ownership level, they’re hopeful that the excitement about the Mets will only help Cohen’s attempts to win one of three casino licenses New York state plans to award this summer, paving the way for an $8 billion development next to Citi Field.
When Cohen bought the Mets for $2.4 billion, this was the idea: turn them into what they always should have been — not New York’s baseball bridesmaids but a team worthy of the city in which it resides. It took Juan Soto for that notion to feel real, and with Opening Day’s arrival, never has it been more so. In French, the name of the Picasso that Cohen bought from Steve Wynn — Le Rêve — means “dream.” The Mets are living theirs, and they don’t intend to wake up 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
Jake Retzlaff announced on Friday that he’s withdrawing from BYU, formally initiating his transfer process from the school.
Retzlaff, BYU’s starting quarterback last year, said in an Instagram post that he made the “difficult decision” to withdraw and that he plans to “step away” from the BYU program. The post makes public what had been expected, as Retzlaff began informing his teammates and coaches in late June of his intent to transfer.
According to ESPN sources, Retzlaff’s path to transfer to a new school is not expected to come from the NCAA transfer portal. With Retzlaff just short of graduating, which would make the transfer process more traditional, he plans to simply leave BYU and then enroll at a new school.
That path is not a common one, but there’s precedent. That includes former Wisconsin defensive back Xavier Lucas leaving school this winter and enrolling at the University of Miami.
Retzlaff expressed his gratitude for his time at BYU, saying “it has meant more to me than just football.” He added that he’s “excited to turn the page and embrace the next chapter.”
BYU officials generally avoided the topic of Retzlaff at Big 12 media days this week, deferring to him to make a statement on his next move.
In a statement on Friday, BYU athletics said: “We are grateful for the time Jake Retzlaff has spent at BYU. As he moves forward, BYU Athletics understands and respects Jake’s decision to withdraw from BYU, and we wish him all the best as he enters the next phase of his career.”
Retzlaff’s departure comes in the wake of BYU’s planned seven-game suspension of him for violating the school’s honor code.
That suspension arose after he was accused in a lawsuit of raping a woman in 2023. The lawsuit ended up being dismissed on June 30, with the parties jointly agreeing to dismiss with prejudice, but Retzlaff’s response included an admission of premarital sex, which is a violation of the BYU honor code.
Retzlaff went 11-2 as BYU’s starting quarterback in 2024, throwing for 2,947 yards and 20 touchdowns. His departure leaves BYU with a three-way quarterback race this summer to replace him, with no clear favorite.
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Eli Lederman
Georgia beat Florida and Texas to its second five-star pledge in the 2026 class on Saturday with a commitment from tight end Kaiden Prothro, the No. 19 overall prospect in the 2026 ESPN 300.
Prothro, a 6-foot-7, 210-pound recruit from Bowdon, Georgia, is ESPN’s No. 2 overall tight end and viewed as one of the top pass catchers at any position in the current class. A priority in-state target for coach Kirby Smart, Prothro took official visits to Auburn, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Texas before narrowing his recruitment to the Bulldogs, Gators and Longhorns last month.
He announced his commitment to Georgia in a ceremony at Bowdon High School, where Prothro has hauled in 89 passes for 2,034 yards and 35 touchdowns over the past two seasons.
Prothro arrives as the Bulldogs’ 17th ESPN 300 pledge in an incoming recruiting class that sits at No. 2 in ESPN’s latest class rankings for the cycle, joining quarterback Jared Curtis (No. 6 overall) as the program’s second five-star commit in 2026. He now stands as the top-ranked member of a growing Georgia pass-catcher class that also includes four-star wide receivers Brady Marchese (No. 62) and Ryan Mosley (No. 120) and three-star Craig Dandridge.
The Bulldogs, who produced six NFL draft picks at tight ends from 2019-24, have forged a reputation for developing top tight end talent under Smart and assistant coach Todd Hartley. Georgia signed ESPN’s top two tight end prospects — Elyiss Williams and Ethan Barbour — in the 2025 class, and Prothro now follows four-stars Brayden Fogle (No. 142 overall) and Lincoln Keyes (No. 238) as the program’s third tight end pledge in 2026.
Those arrivals, along with eligibility beyond 2025 for current Georgia tight ends Lawson Luckie and Jaden Reddell, could make for a crowded tight end room when Prothro steps on campus next year.
However, Prothro is expected to distinguish himself at the college level as a versatile downfield option capable of creating mismatches with a unique blend of size, speed and physicality in the mold of former two-time All-America Georgia tight end Brock Bowers. His father Clarence told ESPN that Georgia intends to utilize Prothro across roles, including flex tight end and jumbo receiver, and said scheme fit was a key driving factor in his son’s decision.
A three-time state football champion, Prothro caught 33 passes for 831 yards and 13 touchdowns as a sophomore in 2023. He eclipsed 1,200-yards in his junior campaign last fall, closing 2024 with 56 receptions (21.4 yards per catch) and 22 receiving touchdowns en route to a 13-2 finish and a third consecutive state championship. Prothro is also an All-Region baseball player and was credited with 20.7 points and 16.5 rebounds per game in his junior basketball season.
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