NHL Ratifies New Collective Bargaining Agreement: What It Means for the Penguins

On Tuesday, the NHL officially announced a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, a move that is likely going to work out for fans, teams and the league itself, with the business of the National Hockey League continuing to boom.

Now, a further update on the entire situation reveals changes for individual teams, with changes to the NHL schedule coming as soon as the 2026/27 season, and it's one fans have been asking for over the past few years.

According to reports, the schedule will now go from 82 games to 84, with teams all getting an extra two divisional games per year, with this likely to coincide with the shortening of the current six game pre-season to around 3 or 4 per season.

On paper, this seems like a fair trade off for players, as they get a much shorter pre-season coming into the year, and with the NHL looking to prioritize division rivalries moving forward, getting two more games between divisional foes will never be a bad thing, with the team, the arena and the league all benefiting from this new setup.

As mentioned, the schedule won't change until 2026/27, meaning that this upcoming year is the final one in league history with just 82 games played per team, and while there's always a chance of going back to that if this doesn't work out, with 32 teams now in the league and expansion talks ongoing, all signs point to this change sticking around.