The new NHL CBA giveth, and the new NHL CBA taketh away.

Throughout the offseason, we’ve covered the implications of the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement signed between the NHL and the NHLPA, and especially the implications of its staggered rollout.

Along the way, there have been some major potential advantages doled out to the Vancouver Canucks in specific.

Some of the changes that are taking place immediately for the 2025-26, like the new salary cap on playoff rosters, won’t affect the Canucks much, but could hamper some of their Pacific Division rivals like the Vegas Golden Knights.

Other changes that won’t be enacted until the 2026-27 campaign also happen to benefit the Canucks. That most prominently includes changes to maximum contract terms and signing bonuses, which conspire to allow the Canucks a window between July and September, 2026, during which they will be able to offer Quinn Hughes a far larger and more valuable extension than anyone else will afterward.

But no bargaining agreement is all silver linings. You just had to know one of those changes would arrive at a less-than-opportune time for the Canucks, and now it has.

The NHL recently announced that the new rules regarding ‘papering’ players down to the minors – in short, that it’s no longer allowed – will take effect as of October 10, 2025. That’s just one day after the Canucks’ regular season begins.

For the uninitiated, ‘papering’ use to refer to the process of sending a player down to a minor league affiliated, but only ‘on paper.’ In reality, it was a cap-saving maneuver. The basic idea was, if a team had some days off on their schedule, they could re-assign a player who did not require waivers to the AHL for those days, and thus remove that player’s daily cap hit from their books for those same days. The players don’t actually join their AHL teams, and they don’t play games for them, hence this being known as a ‘paper’ transaction. It’s something done purely for clerical purposes. It’s a bit of a loophole, really.

And in a league where expenses against the salary cap are counted daily, this could be a big deal. The more daily cap a team saved, the more effective spending space could be accrued for later. It’s something the Canucks employed to great effect last season, and why they had players like Arshdeep Bains and Aatu Räty doing a fairly consistent back-and-forth Abbotsford shuffle at times.

And it worked. Through daily accrual, and extra daily accrual on those days when players were removed from the roster through paper transactions, the Canucks managed to spend about $2.25 million under the maximum allowable cap, and through the magic of pro-rated cap hits, that would have allowed for them to add some $10 million in AAVs to their roster at the deadline. Of course, the Canucks didn’t spend that money in the end, but they could have.

Those days are now over. As of October 10, ‘papering’ is effectively banned, because now all players reassigned to the AHL must play in at least one AHL game before being recalled. So, demotions and call-ups for their own sake still work the same way, it’s specifically this ‘off-day cap shuffle’ that is no longer allowed.

The reason that the change is being delayed past the delivery of opening day rosters is one the Canucks are familiar with. Those teams who are starting the season ‘on LTIR,’ meaning above the cap and using relief space brought on by long-term injured players, often need to carefully arrange their opening day rosters to allow for the generation of maximum relief space. This is a process that Canucks fans are intimately familiar with from past seasons. And it’s still going to be allowed this year – though there’s no indication whether a similar grace window will be opened up in subsequent seasons, or if it’s just a one-time deal.

In any case, while that would have affected the Canucks in recent years, that’s no longer the case. They’re finally and firmly under the cap, and should open up the year some $2 million below, even with Nils Höglander on IR. There’s no need for any rearranging here; the Canucks can just set their opening day roster the way they’d like it.

It will be later in the year, as the Canucks attempt to accrue cap space, that this rule change will start to impact them. As long as they remain under the cap, they will still accrue. As of right now, before the roster has been finalized, they’re projected to accrue enough to add some $6 million in cap hits to their roster by Trade Deadline 2026.

What they’ve lost is the ability to ‘juice’ that total on off-days by sending their demotable players down to Abbotsford. That means that they’ll have a tough time accruing any more than that projected $6 million, and will probably wind up with a lesser final amount as inevitable injuries and the call-ups that replace them will eat into the excess space throughout the year.

To be fair, papering prospects was always going to be more difficult for the Canucks this year. The number of waiver-exempt players expected to be on the roster this year is far less than it was last year, and really just down to Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Elias Pettersson the Younger, and one of Tom Willander or Victor Mancini. Braeden Cootes is exempt from waivers, too, but ineligible for the AHL at his age.

Still, however, we would have likely seen the likes of Lekkerimäki and whichever young D happened to be on the roster papered down to Abbotsford on a regular basis were that still allowed. But now, that can’t happen. At least, not the way it used to.

What the Canucks could do, if they wished, was employ a bit of a rotation. This seems especially applicable to Willander and Mancini, who both seem about equally worthy of playing NHL games this season.

There’s nothing stopping the Canucks from sending, say, Mancini down for some off-days, and then recalling Willander when those off-days are done. So long as Mancini plays at least one AHL game before he’s recalled again, no rules are broken. So, the Canucks could still accrue some extra cap space, as long as they were willing to rotate through their young defenders somewhat evenly.

Three off-days coming up? Willander goes down. Those off-days end, Mancini comes up. Two more off-days coming up, so Mancini goes down. Those off-days end, Willander comes up.

This would work, and it would help the Canucks accrue more cap space. That said, we have to imagine that most NHL coaches would be against the notion of a player’s spot in the lineup being dictated by such financial pressures, and we can safely put Adam Foote in that category.

This wasn’t an issue with ‘papering,’ as the players sent down for that purpose didn’t lose their spot in the lineup. Now it would be different, and would necessitate players being temporarily removed from the lineup, and for that reason, it will probably happen a lot less.

And so, for the most part, the days of the Canucks building up extra spending space through the process of papering prospects down to Abbotsford are over. Twas a short and glorious reign.

With how the Vancouver front office had managed to take advantage of the old system, however, we have to imagine they’re already hard at work figuring out ways to game the new system. The more things change, the more they stay the same.