Salary arbitration hearings are a little more than a week away with a total of 15 players filing for one earlier this month. Ottawa’s Xavier Bourgault has already signed while the other 14 are still without contracts. PuckPedia has received the schedule for hearing dates, which is as follows:
July 20
D Jamie Drysdale, Flyers
F Cole Perfetti, Jets
July 22
F Trevor Zegras, Flyers
July 23
G Jet Greaves, Blue Jackets
July 25
F Connor McMichael, Blues
F Jason Robertson, Stars
July 27
F Cole Sillinger, Blue Jackets
July 28
F Nicholas Robertson, Penguins
July 29
D Braden Schneider, Rangers
D Ronan Seeley, Hurricanes
July 30
F Kirby Dach, Canadiens
F Alex Jefferies, Islanders
August 1
F Peyton Krebs, Sabres
G Akira Schmid, Panthers
Philadelphia will be busy early in the process but that is by choice, as teams can request where their players are scheduled on the arbitration docket. Conversely, teams like Montreal, Florida, and Buffalo likely requested that their players be placed at the back, allowing for more time for negotiations or planning.
A refresher on the arbitration rules:
A player and team can settle on a deal at any point before the hearing starts.
Once the hearing has taken place, the arbitration decision must be issued by email within 48 hours of the closing.
Arbitration awards can only be one or two years in length; players who are in their final year of restricted free agency are only entitled to a one-year term.
The team decides on the awarded term, as these were all player elections.
The team can walk away from the arbitration decision if a contract with an average annual value of more than $4.9508MM is Teams have 48 hours to decide if they’ll accept or walk away.
Once a team has had all of its cases settled or awarded, a second buyout window will open up three days later. However, only a player who was on the roster at the trade deadline and has a cap charge of $4MM or more is eligible to be bought out during this 48-hour window.