The 2020–21 NHL season will be the 104th season of operation of the National Hockey League. This is scheduled to be the last season with 31 teams competing in an 82-game regular season; the Seattle Kraken are planned to begin play during the following 2021–22 season. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic having delayed the start of the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs to August, the 2020–21 regular season has been delayed until at least December 1, 2020, instead of the normal October to April period.
League business
Collective bargaining agreement
The collective bargaining agreement, which had been effect since the end of the 2012–13 NHL lockout, was set to enter its final season in 2020–21. On July 10, 2020, the league reached an agreement to renew the CBA through the 2025–26 NHL season, including an increase of the minimum player salary to $750,000 from $700,000, increasing the maximum value of entry-level contracts, deferring 10% of player salaries for the 2020–21 season to cover costs associated with the pandemic, escrow of player salaries capped at 20% for this season and decreasing incrementally to 14-18%, 10%, and 6% over the three seasons that follow, doubling of the playoff bonus pool to $32 million, and an agreement for the NHL to negotiate a return to the 2022 and 2026 Winter Olympics. The CBA will be automatically renewed through 2026–27 if player escrow debt falls between $125 million and $250 million after the 2024–25 season.
Salary cap
As part of the new CBA, the salary cap will remain at $81.5 million for the 2020–21 season. Future increases will occur incrementally until the league recovers from the financial impact of the pandemic.
Player and puck tracking technology
This is planned to be the first regular season that the league's player and puck tracking system we be utilized at 31 NHL arenas. The system will allow on-air features such as speed displays, puck tracking graphics, and marker graphics hovering above players. The league had planned to deploy this technology to all 31 arenas by September 2019, but a change to its primary technology partner delayed implementation.
Media rights
' current ten-year contract for U.S. national broadcast rights will expire after the 2020–21 season ; the NHL has explored the possibility of splitting its national media rights between interested broadcasters, and possibly signing with an over-the-top service. In any case, the league is looking to generate more revenue than the nearly US$2 billion total that NBC paid over the life of their 2011–12 to 2020–21 contract.Sports Business Journal reported on June 15 that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NHL would be deferring all negotiations regarding future media rights to no earlier than late-2020 or early-2021. In Canada, this will be the seventh season of the league's twelve-year rights deal with Rogers Sports & Media. Sportsnet West's regional rights to both the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers expire at the end of the previous 2019–20 season.
Draft
The 2020 NHL Entry Draft was originally scheduled for June 26–27, 2020, at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It has since been tentatively scheduled for October 9–10, 2020, and will be held virtually.
The New York Islanders were scheduled to play all their home games for the 2020–21 season at Nassau Coliseum. The team had split their home games between Nassau and Barclays Center during the past two seasons. The Islanders plan to move to UBS Arena for the 2021–22 season. In June 2020, Mikhail Prokhorov, whose company runs the Nassau Coliseum, announced that the Coliseum would be closed indefinitely while it seeks new investors to take it over and assume the remaining debt.
Regular season
The regular season was originally planned to begin in October 2020, and end in April 2021, but has changed due to developments in the COVID-19 pandemic. The league still intends to hold a full 82-game regular season in 2020–21. Training camp is tentatively scheduled to open on November 17, and the regular season to begin on December 1.
