- Cap hit
- The amount a contract counts against the cap in a season: its average annual value, not what the player is paid that year.
- Rounded cap hits
- News often reports a contract's money rounded, such as “$7.8M” for a $7,812,500 cap hit. A signing confirmed by two or more outlets is recorded so the player and term show, but its cap hit counts as exact only when two outlets state the same figure to the dollar, or a club or NHLPA release with a second outlet does. Until then it shows as “≈ $7.8M (rounded)” and is left out of every team total, which says so beside it: “+ 1 signing not yet confirmed to the dollar”. Totals stay exact for what they cover.
- Cap space
- The ceiling minus everything the club has committed: roster cap hits, the charged part of buried contracts, and dead cap.
- LTIR relief and effective space
- Long-term injured reserve does not create room under the ceiling. It lets a club go over the ceiling by up to the injured players' relief, which is why a team can show more than 100% of the cap used and still be compliant, and why the cap bar draws LTIR as a buffer above the ceiling. Effective space is cap space plus that relief. Under the 2025 MOU, regular LTIR relief is limited per player to the prior season's league-average salary; a player on season-ending LTIR gives his full cap hit. A club also loses any cap space it still had when it placed the player, so its LTIR pool is the relief less that space. We show the published pool for each club, which accounts for it.
- Buried contracts
- A player sent to the minors still counts for the part of his cap hit above the league minimum plus $375,000. Below that, he costs the club nothing.
- The 50-contract limit
- A club may hold 50 player contracts. The count leaves out players who are 18 or 19 on September 15, are off the NHL roster, have played fewer than 11 NHL games this season and are playing in junior or Europe, as the league's junior exemption does. A teenager assigned to the AHL or ECHL counts. Where a player is playing comes from the NHL's own records, checked daily; until he has played this season, he counts.
- Dead cap
- Cap charges for players no longer on the roster: buyouts, salary retained in trades, season-opening injured-reserve charges, and last season's performance-bonus overage.