NHL Waivers Explained: The 24-Hour Window

The phone call always comes around noon. A player learns his name went on the daily waiver list, and from that minute he has 24 hours of not really knowing where he lives anymore. Any of the other 31 NHL teams can take him for $0 in compensation, with the team currently in last place picking first. Most players quietly clear and report to the AHL. Some never do. Brandon Bussi, an undrafted 27-year-old goalie, sat on Florida's wire in October 2025 and woke up the next day a Carolina Hurricane on his way to a 31-win season. So what are NHL waivers and how do they actually work, who gets to skip the wire, and why does a claim that costs $0 still scare every GM in the room? Here is the rule through one idea: The 24-Hour Window.

Waivers are the one true tax on a long NHL career. They sit inside Article 13 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and they exist to stop teams from stockpiling proven NHL talent in the AHL beyond what the cap and roster math fairly allow. The mechanism is simple, the consequences are not.

One number is how fast the claim window slams shut; the other is how long a young player gets to stay safely hidden before the wire matters.

What NHL Waivers Actually Are

Waivers are the league's gatekeeping system for moving a player from the NHL roster down to the AHL. Article 13 of the CBA splits them into three types. Regular waivers are the standard kind: any non-exempt player loaned to the AHL during the Playing Season Waiver Period, which begins 12 days before opening night and runs through the regular season's end, must clear first. Unconditional waivers cover terminations and buyouts (the buyout window runs June 15-30). Re-entry waivers were eliminated when the CBA was ratified in January 2013, despite older blog posts still describing the half-salary recall mechanism that used to apply.

The list itself is published once a day at noon Eastern. Every NHL general manager and capologist sees the same names at the same moment, and the clock starts. Our salary-cap explainer walks through how a claimed contract immediately rewires the new team's cap math; the wire is the moment that math goes live.

How the 24-Hour Window Runs

From noon ET on day one to noon ET on day two, any of the other 31 teams can submit a claim. If multiple teams claim the same player, the team with the lowest points percentage at that moment wins. Before November 1, the previous season's final standings are used; starting November 1, the current standings take over. That is the part most fans miss: the bottom of the league actually holds the most sway in October because they get first dibs on anyone the contending clubs try to shuffle out.

When the window closes, two things can happen. If a player clears with no claims, his team can loan him to the AHL. If a player is claimed, the new team takes the existing contract as-is and puts him on the active roster. Players quietly clear all the time. Plenty get picked off the wire too. The most consequential claim of the 2025-26 season was Brandon Bussi, claimed by Carolina off Florida's wire in October, who went 31-6-2 with a .894 save percentage covering for the injured Pyotr Kochetkov.

Washington knows that it's going to be hard to sneak him through.

— Elliotte Friedman, Sportsnet insider, on Capitals goaltender Clay Stevenson's 2025 trip through waivers, Russian Machine Never Breaks

Who Skips the Waiver Wire

Not every player has to face the wire. CBA Article 13 sets an exemption table by signing age, and exemption ends at whichever ceiling comes first: a number of years, or a number of games played. A skater who first signs his Entry-Level Contract at age 18 is exempt for five years or 160 NHL games. At 19, the window is four years or 160 games. By age 25 or later, exemption is essentially one year or one game. Goaltenders get a wider window: a goalie signed at 18 is exempt for six years or 80 NHL games, scaling down with signing age. Our ELC slide-rule explainer covers the related 10-game cutoff that shapes the same young roster.

One important wrinkle: for players age 20 and older, all professional games count toward the games threshold, not only NHL games. AHL, KHL, SHL and Liiga games all accrue. The same is not true under 20, when only NHL games move the dial. And once a player has cleared waivers once, his new exemption from re-clearing expires when he has played 10 NHL games OR spent 30 days on the active roster since the last time he cleared. Hit either threshold and the team must re-waive him to send him down.

The $0 Cost That Still Scares GMs

A regular waiver claim costs the new team nothing in compensation. No draft pick, no cash, no future considerations. The claiming club simply assumes the existing contract in full and puts the player on its active roster. The $125 fee mentioned in CBA Article 13.16 is paid only on unconditional-waiver buyout claims, which is why it is essentially symbolic.

What scares general managers is everything that comes after the $0. A claimed player cannot be quietly demoted: if the new team later tries to send him to the AHL, he goes back through the wire again, exposing the same asset all over. That second pass deters most of the would-be moves. Teams place players on waivers for one reason above all others, and the cap-flexibility argument has been the standard explanation for two decades.

As with every decision we make regarding the operation of our team, we made this decision with the objective of increasing our odds of success. Part of the ingredients necessary for success in the NHL is team depth. In order to have team depth, you need to properly manage your cap space.

— Julien BriseBois, Tampa Bay Lightning General Manager, on placing Tyler Johnson and Luke Schenn on waivers, NHL.com

Waivers sit in the middle of the contract layer of the NHL. The same CBA decides how the salary cap works, how the entry-level slide rule preserves a contract year, how the draft feeds the pipeline, and the on-ice rulebook covering icing, offside, the power play and how standings tip the worst-first claim priority in October.

Sources and Reporting

• NHL.com (Hurricanes Transaction Primer): noon-ET claim window, reverse-standings priority, re-clear thresholds
• NHL.com: Jan 12 2021 waiver wire (Perry, Tyler Johnson, Schenn) + BriseBois quote
• Flames Nation: CBA Article 13 walkthrough (exemption table, 12-day pre-season period, $125 fee)
• Pro Hockey Rumors: 2025-26 claim retrospective (Bussi, Glendening, Reinhardt)

The Verdict: The 24-Hour Window

A waiver day looks, from the outside, like just another transaction wire. From inside the locker room it is a phone that might ring, a city that might change, a family that might pack. The 24-Hour Window is the rule that makes a veteran replaceable and an unknown into a starter overnight, all without a single dollar changing hands. The league's smartest GMs respect it because they know how easily it can take a player from them, or hand them one they did not see coming.