When the first all-player strike in one of the NHL’s feeder leagues ended last week, there had been more than a week of dark days and 41 games cancelled over the typically action-packed holiday break in hockey’s Double AA circuit.
More than 70 percent of ECHL players voted to walk away, just before Christmas, despite being offered a 20 percent pay bump by the league.
In the end, this wasn’t a dispute about money. It was about trying to fix some of the difficult working conditions in the league, conditions players believed were too far below those in the NHL and AHL.
The memorandum of agreement for the ECHL’s new deal, obtained by The Athletic, highlights just how relatively small the financial stakes were. Starting this week, ECHL players will now make an average of roughly $24,600 a season, a raise from $20,300 under the old collective bargaining agreement.
Players are only paid six months of the year, during the regular season, but receive additional weeks’ salary if their teams make the playoffs.
While there are some other small new concessions in the CBA that will help players make ends meet (such as getting access to health benefits in the offseason), to hear ECHLers explain their strike vote, the pay bump was never the driving force. Instead, they were trying to end extreme practices by some ECHL teams that included 20-hour road trips by two-seater buses, games being scheduled at midnight, no days off, ill-fitting helmets and being given used equipment to wear.
Some of the ECHL’s road trips this season have been particularly grueling, as laid out here previously.
“Those type of (travel) things are just unprofessional and that’s something we really honed in on during these negotiations to correct,” said Jimmy Mazza, a six-year ECHL veteran who was part of the Professional Hockey Players’ Association negotiating committee. “I believe with this contract, you’ll see guys stay longer in this league.”
“You can’t put a dollar value on the health and safety of a player,” added Todd Skirving, a forward with the Kalamazoo Wings. “That was the most important thing. We just felt like there was no movement on that side of things (in negotiations), so as players we needed to stick together and unite and get that before anything else.”
The ECHL is a league in an odd and evolving position these days. While it’s two rungs below the NHL and far from the limelight, nearly 800 ECHL players have made it to hockey’s highest level over the years, including many who are currently playing big roles in the NHL this season.
Bobby McMann, for example, is on the Toronto Maple Leafs’ top line with Auston Matthews right now and was in the ECHL as recently as 2021-22. Justin Brazeau, who has 20 points in 27 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins, played two recent seasons in the ECHL after coming out of junior hockey undrafted. And plenty of goalies have spent full seasons in the ECHL early in their careers to get more starts, including big-name veterans such as Jonathan Quick, Jordan Binnington, Logan Thompson and Philipp Grubauer.
Approximately 25 former ECHL players make the NHL every season on average, going back the past 20 years. It’s not an insignificant number.
But when those future NHLers played in the ECHL, they were teammates with players making as little as $13,500 a season, which has long been the rookie minimum. Many ECHL players take on second (and sometimes third) jobs, especially during the offseason, when they can sometimes earn more doing a desk job or running a hockey camp than they do on the ice throughout the hockey season.
In many ways, the ECHL has become a two-tiered league as it has become younger (with an average age of around 23 years old) and more NHL teams have sent prospects there to develop. This season, for example, there are 52 players on NHL contracts who are playing in the ECHL, which is nearly 8 percent of the league. Another roughly 25 percent of players are on AHL contracts, meaning they earn a far better wage given the AHL minimum salary is $52,725.
ECHL players are provided with a place to live and receive a per diem on the road (which was raised to $60 a day in the new CBA), but even then it can be hard for players to get by on what they’re making. You add in the difficult travel — including playing three games in three nights, with the third game often played on a Sunday afternoon on little rest — and many players don’t last long under those conditions.
Part of why the ECHL has become such a young league is players can find better pay and scheduling in European leagues. ECHL rules also limit clubs to playing only four veterans a night.
“It’s a massive gap,” Mazza said of what the NHL- and AHL-contracted players are making versus the ECHL players. “You have some guys in the league trying to make ends meet. They’re coming in around $550 a week, and it’s very difficult for those guys to navigate it. But those guys are helping the development of all those guys above them.”
PHPA executive director Brian Ramsay said his membership is encouraged by the fact that more NHL teams are using the ECHL as a true feeder league — the way MLB does with its various levels — including teams like the Penguins’ first-place affiliate in Wheeling, W.Va., who are filled with players on AHL deals. It’s possible that if this trend continues, it could improve pay and conditions in the ECHL even more in the years to come.
The league will expand to 32 teams by 2027-28 with new teams in Rio Rancho, N.M., and Augusta, Ga., allowing every NHL club an affiliate.
“You’re seeing that development model happening, unlike in years past,” Ramsay said. “We want to encourage that more.”
Justin Brazeau, who has 12 goals in 27 games for the Pittsburgh Penguins this season, played 75 games in the ECHL. (Charles LeClaire / Imagn Images)
The good news for the ECHL is attendance has hit record levels in recent years, to the point that they’re averaging 5,000 fans a game and more than five million tickets sold annually. A handful of teams are averaging 7,500 fans per game and some, such as the Orlando Solar Bears, play in NBA facilities.
While players on ECHL contracts said they realize the league can’t support paying them even AHL-level salaries, they believed fixing the health and safety standards in a league where all 30 teams are affiliated with NHL clubs and are sending players up the hockey food chain over time was a minimum requirement of a new CBA.
As part of the new deal, the ECHL will also now have a health and safety committee modeled after the NHL’s, giving players input into next year’s schedule in order to help ease any difficult travel conditions. The new CBA also includes a limit of 325 miles between back-to-back games and mandates a set day off every week, similar to what NHL and AHL players receive.
Due to altered qualifying offer rules, ECHL players will also now be able to become free agents after 190 games in the league and will receive compensation for being part of commercial appearances, something that wasn’t the case in the past.
That said, many of the gains players made here won’t dramatically affect their bottom lines, and the reality is that most players on ECHL deals will still need those second jobs and other sources of income to continue to chase their dream of making it to the next level.
And while they never expected this would all end in a strike vote, players said they felt they were in some ways fighting for the future of the league. They believe it will be a better place to play now that they stood their ground.
“There’s a lot of guys that have to (struggle to) make ends meet in this league; it’s not like we’re making millions down here,” Skirving said, noting that at 33 years old, his NHL dream was over and his focus was on helping young players entering the ECHL. “But with the new deal, we felt it puts players in a better position to be able to focus more on hockey, get the proper rest, do the things they need to do to hopefully get that next opportunity. At the end of the day, the American League’s not that far away. Sometimes you need a few bounces or a few injuries to get there.”
“I wanted to leave the players who came after us in a better position than when I was there,” said Mazza, who opted to retire in the offseason, partway through what became year-long CBA negotiations with the league. “And I was receiving texts from ECHL alumni saying they were proud of the guys for sticking up for themselves.”
