What is the lowest salary in the NHL? (and who is making it)

In hockey and most other professional sports the contracts that make the headlines are the largest and most expensive ones. But these are team sports and there are a lot of players that don’t get the press. How much do the players at the bottom-end get paid?

What is the lowest salary in the NHL? In 2020-21 the lowest salary as mandated by the collective bargaining agreement for a player is $700,000 USD. Approximately 14% of the players in the NHL make the league minimum, which will be raised to $750,000 in 2021-22 in the last year of the current collective bargaining agreement. 

The current bargaining agreement between the NHL and the players started out in 2012 is set to expire after the 2021-22. Throughout this time the league has mapped out what the lowest salary for a player in the NHL can be in each given year. 

The minimum has been raised with an expectation that the salary cap will rise but has not been pegged at a certain percentage of the salary cap. 

The NHL and NHLPA have added a four-year extension unto the existing agreement. The extension will see an increase in the league minimum salary for the final two years (here is a look at the average NHL salary).

Here is a list of those 10 years laid out in the current bargaining agreement and the 4 additional years of the cba extension for the minimum salary in a Standard Players Contract

Year	Minimum Salary
2025-26	$800,000 USD
2024-25	$775,000 USD
2023-24	$750,000 USD
2022-23	$750,000 USD
2021-22	$750,000 USD
2020-21	$700,000 USD
2019-20	$700,000 USD
2018-19	$650,000 USD
2017-18	$650,000 USD
2016-17	$575,000 USD
2015-16	$575,000 USD
2014-15	$550,000 USD
2013-14	$550,000 USD
2012-13	$525,000 USD

Who makes the league minimum?

So who makes the minimum salary in the league? Well, I have got a chart at the bottom of the article of all the current players in the NHL who make the minimum salary. Keep in this mind that the players on this chart are very fluid and may be there one day, but gone the next.

That’s the life of a player when you are at the bottom of the pay scale in the NHL.

As you scan through the players names you will notice that there are not many household names. The types of players that fit into the lowest salary players are either on their rookie contracts or journeyman players or veterans on their last contract.  

Some of the players on rookie contracts who make the minimum include Carter Hart (who is a fantastic young goaltender), Samuel Girard (great young defensemen) and Frederik Gauthier.

Some of the veteran players who are at then end of their career and are now making the minimum include Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, and Jason Spezza. They may have been able to make more money on a different team, but will often take less money (they have already made a lot) to play in a situation they like where they have a chance at the Stanley Cup.

However, most of the players are either players that are too good for the minors but not quite good enough to be a regular in the NHL (we call these players ‘tweeners’). This list includes press box sitters such as Tobias Reider, Curtis Lazar, and Daniel Carr. Unless you follow the teams they are on you probably do not know who they are.

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An interesting subset of this list are veteran players who used to make a lot, and I mean a lot of money, but took a minimum contract because they wanted to keep on playing.

They can still help the team out, but they usually will take less money to be on a good team because they want to get another shot at winning a Stanley Cup.  This list of players includes Patrick Marleau and Jason Spezza.  

How many players in the NHL make the league minimum? 

Again, the list of players in the NHL who make the minimum will always be very fluid but give or take there is about 9% of players in the NHL.  There are about 98 players who make the league minimum out of the 700 players total. 

This surprised me a little bit, as I didn’t expect that high of a percentage to only be making the league minimum. This has even been exaggerated due to the COVID pandemic. The league’s salary cap stayed flat so teams did not have as much money to spend on players.

This resulted in an extra 30 players being paid the minimum – the year before there were about 68 players making the minimum.

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What is the discrepancy between league minimum and maximum?

As in most other professions the few people at the top make most of the money and this is no different in NHL players salaries. 

The maximum salary a player can earn is 20% of the team salary cap, which in the current year would be 16.3 million dollars. So the range of salaries in the NHL this year could be as high as 16.3 million and as low as 700K. 

No player is making $16.3 million dollars this year, but the highest is not far off as John Tavares and Austin Matthews are both making $15.9 million. This is a little deceiving because the actual average of their contracts, or aav (annual average value), over the lifetime of them is about $11 million. However, the NHL allows teams to pay players different salary sums in different years.  

Another way to look at it is the top three paid players this year – Tavares, Matthews and Connor McDavid – make as much combined ($45 million) as the bottom 65 players in the NHL. 

NHL league minimum versus other sports

How does the NHL compare to the NFL, MLB and NBA for league minimums? 

• NBA – the NBA lowest salary is based on years of experience, but of all these at 0 years experience a player would get a minimum salary of $898,320
• NFL – the minimum annual salary for a rookie active roster player with a one-year contract is $480,000
• MLB – In 2019 the minimum salary for a baseball player in the major leagues was $555,000

List of players who make the league minimum

Player	Team
Yannick Webber	NSH
2. Brett Ritchie	CGY
3. Dmytro Timashov	NYI
4. Kevin Connauton	FLA
5. Craig Anderson	WSH
6. Devin Shore	EDM
7. Andy Greene	NYI
8. Frédérik Gauthier	ARI
9. Fredrik Claesson	SJS
10. Michael Del Zotto	CBJ
11. Riley Sheahan	BUF
12. Alexander Volkov	TBL
13. Drake Caggiula	ARI
14. Jalen Chatfield	VAN
15. Micheal Haley	OTT
16. Mason Marchment	FLA
17. Kurtis Gabriel	SJS
18. Ryan MacInnis	CBJ
19. Max McCormick	CAR
20. Nikita Nesterov	CGY
21. Gustav Forsling	FLA
22. Louis Belpedio	MIN
23. Dominik Simon	CGY
24. Drew Shore	CAR
25. Zach Senyshyn	BOS
26. Joakim Nordström	CGY
27. Steven Fogarty	BUF
28. Austin Poganski	STL
29. Joe Thornton	TOR
30. Sheldon Rempal	CAR
31. Greg McKegg	BOS
32. Glenn Gawdin	CGY
33. Kasimir Kaskisuo	NSH
34. Matt Nieto	SJS
35. Patrick Marleau	SJS
36. Clark Bishop	OTT
37. Phillip Di Giuseppe	NYR
38. Scott Wedgewood	NJD
39. Daniel Carr	WSH
40. Ross Colton	TBL
41. Travis Boyd	TOR
42. Jayson Megna	COL
43. Troy Grosenick	LAK
44. Mark Alt	LAK
45. Tomas Jurco	VGK
46. Frédérick Gaudreau	PIT
47. Brandon Davidson	BUF
48. Andreas Borgman	TBL
49. Jonny Brodzinski	NYR
50. Zac Rinaldo	CGY
51. Matthew Peca	OTT
52. Matt Irwin	BUF
53. Josh Currie	PIT
54. Dakota Mermis	MIN
55. Tobias Rieder	BUF
56. Mark Jankowski	PIT
57. Evan Rodrigues	PIT
58. Buddy Robinson	CGY
59. Kyle Rau	MIN
60. Matt Bartkowski	MIN
61. Noah Juulsen	FLA
62. Jonas Johansson	BUF
63. Gemel Smith	TBL
64. Nicolas Meloche	SJS
65. Matt Luff	LAK
66. Jason Spezza	TOR
67. Michael McCarron	NSH
68. Jacob De La Rose	STL
69. Patrick Russell	EDM
70. Artyom Zagidulin	CGY
71. Oscar Dansk	VGK
72. Ben Harpur	NSH
73. Michael Chaput	ARI
74. Marc Michaelis	VAN
75. Eric Comrie	WPG
76. Michael Dal Colle	NYI
77. Matt Roy	LAK
78. Michael Amadio	LAK
79. Dylan Gambrell	SJS
80. Brogan Rafferty	VAN
81. Daniel Renouf	COL
82. Matt Tennyson	NJD
83. Andrew Agozzino	ANA
84. Philippe Maillet	WSH
85. Nathan Walker	STL
86. Nate Prosser	PHI
87. Patrick Brown	VGK
88. Luke Johnson	MIN
89. Michael Sgarbossa	WSH
90. Kevin Czuczman	PIT
91. Brad Hunt	MIN
92. Marcus Högberg	OTT
93. Jarred Tinordi	BOS
94. Chad Ruhwedel	PIT
95. Gerald Mayhew	MIN
96. Anton Blidh	BOS
97. Joel Hanley	DAL
98. Samuel Morin	PHI