Waivers (NHL)

Waivers is a National Hockey League (NHL) labor management procedure by which an NHL team makes a professional ice hockey player’s contract and rights available to all other NHL teams. Other NHL teams "waive" any claim to a player designated for assignment in the American Hockey League (AHL) or designated for release. The process is typically referred to as "being placed on waivers."

In the NHL, each player signs what is, or is a variation of, a standard NHL player's contract. The contract specifies that the team has exclusive rights to the player playing in the NHL. Once an NHL player has played in a certain number of games or a set number of seasons has passed since the signing of his first NHL contract (see here), that player must be offered to all of the other NHL teams before he can be assigned to a minor league affiliate. In the 2005 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) assignment waivers applies only to loans from an NHL club to its American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate.

After a player has been designated for assignment, the other 29 NHL teams can put in a claim or waive their claim for that player. The claims process starts at noon Eastern Time and ends 24 hours later. If only one team makes a claim for the player, then he will be transferred to the claiming team. If more than one team makes a claim, then the player will be transferred to the team having the lowest percentage of possible points in league standings at the time of the request for waivers. If waivers are requested outside of the playing season, or before November 1, then the player shall be transferred to the team with the lowest points in the preceding season. If no team places a claim, the player can be sent to a minor league affiliate.

When a player clears waivers and is sent down and then is called up again, he does not have to clear waivers to be sent down again unless he has played ten games or has been "up" for 30 days.

The 2005 NHL-NHLPA collective bargaining agreement (CBA) introduced "re-entry waivers." With limited exceptions, any player who was subject to waivers before assignment to the minors must clear re-entry waivers before being called back up if said player is on a one-way contract or a two-way contract with an AHL salary in excess of $105,000. Exceptions are players who have played in over 320 professional games (180 for goaltenders) and have not spent more than 80 games on an NHL roster in the past two seasons or 40 games during the previous season. The procedure to make a claim on re-entry waivers is the same; however, teams who claim players on re-entry waivers are only responsible for half the salary and cap hit, while the original team is responsible for the other half, unless the claimed player is later assigned to the AHL again before his contract has expired, in which case the salary and cap hit comes off the books of both teams.

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