This will not be a treatise on the power of the “invisible hand” or market economics. Rather, it is a plea to Gary Bettman and the NHL to intervene on behalf of small-market teams.
Every professional sport is, first and foremost, a business. The NHL is simultaneously a traditional business and a non-traditional one. Traditionally, its primary function is to drive revenue, deliver customer satisfaction, market to customers, and employ talent. Non-traditionally, the competitors within the NHL enterprise are also business partners. Teams compete on the ice, but they also have to cooperate on the rules, schedule, and shared revenue. It would be like Netflix and Amazon having to agree on a programming launch schedule. In most industries, rivals don’t jointly run the marketplace.
What is the problem?
The problem is that the NHL has inadvertently (or perhaps not) created an unfair marketplace through the proliferation of what I will call “movement clauses.”
Let’s get the terminology out of the way. Broadly, movement clauses fall into three buckets:
1. No-movement clause: A player cannot be traded or placed on waivers without permission.
2. No-trade clause: A player cannot be traded without permission.
3. Modified no-trade clause: A player submits a list of teams they can or cannot be traded to.
The rules: movement clauses are negotiated by the player and their respective team and cannot be overridden without the player’s consent. Only players who are 27 or older, or who have seven accrued seasons, are eligible for movement clauses.
Bored yet? It gets more interesting.
There are three ways to acquire talent in the NHL: the NHL Draft, trades, or free agency. The NHL Draft is straightforward and operates as a sort of bizarro meritocracy.
Trading and free agency mirror Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” concept. Players and owners value players based on varying market conditions; the key differentiator here is the NHL salary cap. The salary cap was introduced in 2005–06 as a way to prevent “richer” teams from building dynasties through brute economies of scale. Specifically, it was implemented (after a lockout) to promote parity and create a more level playing field for trading and free agency.
My contention is that movement clauses are undermining the intent of the salary cap, giving certain teams an edge—and, more specifically, hurting Canadian teams disproportionately.
As of March 2025, approximately 260 players out of 861 (roughly 30%) have a movement clause. In fact, according to data from PuckPedia, CapFriendly, and reporting from The Athletic’s NHL staff, the number of movement clauses has skyrocketed. Over the past six seasons, the inclusion of movement clauses has increased by 44.1%. Given the tenure requirements for movement clauses, most of the top players in the game have secured them, accounting for a 72% jump—from 46 to 79—over the same period.
What impact do movement clauses have?
The best public snapshot we have is The Athletic’s 2025 anonymous NHL player poll, which asked (82 players responded): “If you have a no-trade list, what’s the first team on it?” In that poll, the teams most often named were:
1. Winnipeg Jets — 48.78%
2. Buffalo Sabres — 19.51%
3. San Jose Sharks — 8.54%
4. Calgary Flames — 3.66%
What do all these teams have in common? They are small markets. Also, two of the four are Canadian. In fact, of the seven Canadian teams, four—Winnipeg, Ottawa, Edmonton, and Calgary—can be considered small- to mid-market teams.
“There’s not much to do out there,” one player told The Athletic. “It’s f—ing cold. I haven’t heard a guy go to Winnipeg and be like, ‘This is going to be my forever home.’” First off, words hurt. But secondly, this is a competitive disadvantage.
If that is not enough, the tax disparity in Canada also makes Canadian NHL teams less desirable. Restrictive covenants like movement clauses make it doubly hard for Canadian teams to compete. Teams with no state income tax, such as Florida and Nevada, have claimed four of the past five Stanley Cups. How much signal is in that noise?
The NHL salary cap is the same for all teams, but taxes create disparities in what that cap can buy in after-tax dollars. For example, two teams spending to the $83.5 million cap will offer players very different take-home pay depending on local tax rates. A team in a low-tax state effectively gets more “bang for its buck,” allowing it to assemble stronger rosters within the same spending limit.
Whatever makes a location “undesirable,” whether it be taxes or weather, whenever you give players the right to exclude destinations via trade protection, the remaining teams gain an advantage.
Are these no movement clauses common in professional sports?
What I don’t understand is that other professional leagues don’t do this. Movement clauses are extremely rare in the NBA and virtually non-existent in the NFL. In the NBA, they are restricted to veteran players with eight-plus years of service (four-plus with the team) and are rarely granted. In the NFL, contracts are generally not fully guaranteed, making such clauses practically unused. In MLB, only about 3% to 5% of active roster players have explicitly negotiated no-trade clauses, though this number fluctuates.
Why is it that the NHL has a disproportionate number of these? One theory is that, given contracts are not as long, players are seeking more trade protection as compensation. My thought is that this was just a mistake that snowballed into a blizzard.
I’m all for player empowerment. Go get yours, young fellas. But for the same reason the NHL missed a season to institute the salary cap, these movement clauses need to go. It makes no sense to allow players to negotiate contracts that lead to a competitive disadvantage. If this all sounds like small-market griping, you are likely correct, but it doesn't change the fact that the NHL needs to pay attention to this burgeoning problem.