Reference
Salary cap glossary
Plain-English definitions for the pro hockey cap, contract, and sim terms used across the app.
- Salary Cap
- The maximum total amount a team may spend on player contracts in a single season.
- In Pro Hockey Sim the cap ceiling is set to $104 million, mirroring the current pro hockey league's upper limit. Any trade or signing that would push a team's combined cap hit above this number is automatically blocked.
- Cap Hit
- A player's annual average salary across the life of their contract — what counts against the team's cap.
- If a player signs a 5-year, $40M contract, their cap hit is $8M every year regardless of how much actual money is paid out in any given season. Cap hit, not real cash, is the number teams have to fit under the ceiling.
- Cap Space
- The gap between a team's current cap usage and the league cap ceiling.
- Cap space is how much room a team has to add salary via trade or signing. The cards on the league page show cap usage as a colored bar; the unfilled portion is the team's cap space.
- Cap Ceiling
- The maximum salary cap any team is allowed to spend.
- Set to $104M in this simulator. The ceiling rises each real-world season as league revenue grows.
- Cap Floor
- The minimum a team must spend on player salaries — usually ~$20M below the ceiling.
- Not currently enforced in the simulator, but real teams must spend at least the cap floor to comply with the collective bargaining agreement.
- LTIR (Long-Term Injured Reserve)
- A mechanism that lets a team exceed the cap by the salary of a player out long-term with injury.
- Players placed on LTIR free up cap space roughly equal to their cap hit. It's the most common way contending teams exceed the cap mid-season. Not currently modeled in the sim.
- RFA (Restricted Free Agent)
- A player whose contract is up but whose rights are still controlled by their team.
- RFAs can negotiate offer sheets with other teams, but the original team has the right to match any offer or receive draft-pick compensation if they don't.
- UFA (Unrestricted Free Agent)
- A player whose contract is up and who can sign anywhere without their old team's involvement.
- Players typically become UFAs at age 27 or after 7 accrued seasons, whichever comes first. UFA signings are the main way teams add talent in the off-season.
- Retained Salary
- A trade mechanism where the trading team agrees to keep paying part of an outgoing player's cap hit.
- A team can retain up to 50% of a player's cap hit in a trade, and a maximum of 3 contracts can be retained at once. Useful for moving expensive contracts to teams with less cap space.
- Active Roster
- The list of 20-23 players currently eligible to play in games.
- Pro Hockey Sim enforces a 20-player minimum and 23-player maximum, with at least 2 goalies on every active roster.
- Two-Way Contract
- A contract that pays a different (lower) salary when the player is in the minor league.
- Two-way deals are common for fringe NHL players and let teams maintain depth without taking a full cap hit when the player is in the AHL.
- Bridge Contract
- A short (2-3 year) deal between a young player's entry-level contract and their first long-term extension.
- Bridge deals let teams delay a big commitment and let young players prove they deserve top dollar before signing long-term.
- Overall Rating
- A 60-99 score representing a player's overall on-ice ability in the sim.
- In Pro Hockey Sim, when no real overall is loaded, each player's rating is derived from their cap hit, position, and depth-chart rank. Team strength in the season simulator is a weighted average of the top 12 forwards (50%), top 6 defensemen (30%), and starting goalie (20%).
- Poisson Game Model
- A statistical method for generating realistic hockey scores by drawing each team's goals from a Poisson distribution.
- Each game's lambda (expected goals) is derived from the two teams' overall ratings plus a small home-ice advantage. Tied games at the end of regulation are resolved by a weighted overtime coin-flip.
Related
- How it works — the trade engine and sim model in detail
- About — what Pro Hockey Sim is and FAQ