2025–26 NHL transactions

1.^ After previously announcing that he would retire at the conclusion of the 2024–25 season, Fleury signed a professional tryout agreement with his original team, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and played a single 2025 preseason game on September 27 to end his career.^[8]

2.^ On October 8, 2025, the Columbus Blue Jackets announced that Atkinson would sign a one-day contract to retire as a member of the team on October 16, with Atkinson subsequently honored prior to the team's home game that night.^[11]

3.^ On April 13, 2026, Quick announced that the Rangers' game that night, their second-to-last of the season, would be the final start of his career.^[18][15] He was subsequently scratched for the Rangers' final game of the year.^[19]

4.^ Kopitar announced ahead of the 2025–26 season that he would retire at end of the season;^[20] the Kings were eliminated from the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs on April 26, 2026.^[17]

A team and player may mutually agree to terminate a player's contract at any time. All players must clear waivers before having a contract terminated.

Buyouts can only occur at specific times of the year. For more details on contract terminations as buyouts:

Teams may buy out player contracts (after the conclusion of a season) for a portion of the remaining value of the contract, paid over a period of twice the remaining length of the contract. This reduced number and extended period is applied to the cap hit as well.

• If the player was under the age of 26 at the time of the buyout the player's pay and cap hit will reduced by a factor of 2/3 over the extended period.
• If the player was 26 or older at the time of the buyout the player's pay and cap hit will reduced by a factor of 1/3 over the extended period.
• If the player was 35 or older at the time of signing the contract the player's pay will be reduced by a factor of 1/3, but the cap hit will not be reduced over the extended period.

Injured players cannot be bought out.

Note: This does not include players who have re-signed with their previous team as an unrestricted free agent or as a restricted free agent.

1.^ Davies' contract was announced on July 2, 2025, but not formally signed until October 5 for salary cap reasons; in the interim period, Davies joined the team on an AHL contract.^[163]

* Retained Salary Transaction—Each team is allowed up to three contracts on their payroll where they have retained salary in a trade (i.e. the player no longer plays with Team A due to a trade to Team B, but Team A still retains some salary). Only up to 50% of a player's contract can be kept, and only up to 15% of a team's salary cap can be taken up by retained salary. A contract can only be involved in one of these trades twice, and there must be a minimum of 75 days between the two trades.

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.