This week, the NHL Board of Governors will be meeting to discuss a number of league-wide topics. This meeting includes a representative from each team and for the Los Angeles Kings, that representative is owner Philip Anschutz.
There is usually plenty of news that comes from these meetings as things like the salary cap are discussed. During the October meeting, commissioner Gary Bettman said next year's salary cap could be in the ballpark of $92.5 million. As Pierre LeBrun noted, Bettman wanted to caution that it was very preliminary.
The salary cap will probably be discussed more and if it remains at $92.5 million, it would be a $4.5 million bump over the current salary cap. Next season, the Los Angeles Kings are expected to be in the middle of the league in terms of cap space based on an $88 million salary cap, according to Spotrac, so if that total does go up, that should only help the Kings.
However, the focus of this meeting might be on the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The CBA for the NHL is set to expire in September 2026 so it seems like the league and the NHLPA don't want to wait to get those negotiations started.
Back in October, David Satriano of NHL.com quoted Bettman saying that they would like to get those negotiations started after the first of the year. Bettman thought it could start as early as November but that maybe the two sides had some more work to do. If that is the case, and the negotiations haven't started yet, then this will be the last meeting of the Board of Governors before they kick off.
There is no question that the two sides would like to avoid a lockout if at all possible. The last time the NHL and the NHLPA had to negotiate a new CBA was in 2012. They would end up having a lockout that cost the league about half the season.
The two sides did agree to extend that current CBA for a few more years but will now have about 18 months to work out a new agreement.