We’re still a good six months away from the 2027 Trade Deadline. But a deadline of a different sort passed Tuesday evening this week, and it had to do with the latest CBA and its various contract-related rule changes officially taking effect.

Much of the focus has been on the changes to maximum contract lengths. That’s not the only CBA change that will affect the Vancouver Canucks in both the short- and long-term, but it’s probably the biggest change, and a fine place to start.

Previously, the maximum term a player could extend with their own team for was eight years. As of September 16, it is now seven years. Previously, the maximum term a player could sign with a new team for was seven years; after September 16, it is now six years.

The Canucks themselves got ahead of this by signing Zeev Buium to an eight-year extension two weeks ago. They weren’t the only ones, either. Noah Ostlund (Buffalo), Drake Batherson (Ottawa), Ryan Leonard (Washington), and Justin Sourdif (Washington) all signed their own eight-year deals close to the deadline. Clearly, the Canucks weren’t alone in thinking this was an opportunity not to be missed.

If they attempted to sign any of their other 2027 RFAs or UFAs to eight-year extensions, however – like, for example, Liam Öhgren or Elias Pettersson – they were not successful in those attempts. Whenever the Canucks do get around to extending such players now, they’ll have to do so with a maximum term of seven years.

Then, when it comes to next summer’s UFA crop, the Canucks will be limited to offers of six years or less. Not that the Canucks should be handing out max-term contracts to any UFAs anytime soon.

The other contract-related changes are a little subtler and more nuanced, but carry an importance of their own. One has to do with contract variability, or the amount that compensation can change from year to year within a contract. This refers to the practice of ‘front-loading’ or ‘back-loading’ a contract, and the new changes limit team’s ability to do that.

Previously, the limit was that the gap in compensation between any two years within the same contract could not vary by more than 25% of the Year 1 salary. As well, no single year can carry a salary less than 60% of the highest year of compensation, whereas previously this was set at 71%.

And despite talk of internal budgets, front-loading was a tactic that the Canucks did employ, at least in their most recent contract. Buium will earn $12 million in the first year of his eight-year extension, $11 million in the second year, $10.4 million in the third year, and $8.4 million in the last five years. The change from years two to three is $2 million, which is less than 20% of the year one salary – in other words, an amount of variability that will still be legal under the new CBA. However, that $8.4 million salary is only about 70% of $12 million. That’s a slightly illegal amount under the new CBA. But only by 1%.

In other words, the Canucks may be technically limited in their ability to front-load future contracts, but since they pretty much already operated under the new parameters with the Buium extension anyway, it’s not something that will affect them much.

Lastly, there was a change in the amount of signing bonuses that can be attached to a contract. Previously, there were practically no safeties on this, and as long as a player’s base salary was at least at the league minimum, the rest of their contract could be made up of signing bonuses. This was used to a ridiculous extent this summer when Leo Carlsson signed an offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers that was almost 95% signing bonus.

As of September 16, signing bonuses are now capped at 60% of a contract’s total value. Like with the front-loading, this is a tactic that the Canucks have used, but not to excess. Buium’s extension contains $11 million in signing bonuses ($6 million in Year 1, $5 million in Year 2), which is only about 14.5% of the contract’s total value. Already, they’re operating well under the 60% threshold. Even Elias Pettersson’s eight-year contract, which was signing bonus-heavy, ‘only’ includes $47 million in signing bonuses, or about 50.5% of the total value of the contract.

So, even at their most spend-free, the Canucks don’t tend to offer the kinds of signing bonuses that are now banned under the new CBA.

That’s pretty much the story here. The new term limits will impact the Canucks’ ability to lock up their RFAs to eight-year deals, but seven-year deals remain on the table, and will so until a new CBA is agreed to somewhere down the road.

The limits on contract variability and signing bonuses might impact the Canucks somewhere down the road, too, but not until they’re in a place where they’re ready and willing to spend more money than they currently are. Their current slate of re-signees aren’t likely to demand such things on their next contracts, anyway.

Buium makes a fine case study here. The Canucks made sure to get his deal done before this deadline, because they wanted him signed for eight years. But they didn’t take advantage of the ability to load him up with signing bonuses, and they gave him a contract variability that was juuust barely illegal under the new standard (70% vs 71%).

These changes will, for the most part, then probably impact the big-spending contending teams the Canucks are trying to catch up to before they impact the Canucks.