- Bill Daly says the NHL and CHL have finalized the 19-year-old AHL agreement
- Any 19-year-old drafted in the first round qualifies, and clubs are not capped at one
- Read below for what it opens up for Caleb Desnoyers, Brady Martin and other 2025 first-rounders
The rule everyone has been waiting on since last summer’s CBA is finally written down.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly was asked by David Alter of The Hockey News whether the CHL-NHL piece of the new CBA had been completed. It has.
“We did modify the approach, obviously with the input and approval of the Players Association,” Daly said. “But the approach now is going to really be any player who is a 19-year-old player who was drafted in the first round of the draft is eligible for assignment for the AHL. Each club won’t be limited to one.”
That last line is the part that changed. When the provision first surfaced in July 2025, Frank Seravalli reported each team would be allowed to place one 19-year-old CHL player in the AHL per season.
The one-per-team limit is gone.
Daly did tamp down expectations on the volume of it.
“If you happen to have two players or three players that fit that category, you have the ability or option or alternative to loan all three players to the AHL,” he said. “I don’t anticipate that’s a lot of clubs or a lot of movement at this point, but we’ll see how it plays out.”
The scope stays narrow by design. A club without a CHL-drafted 19-year-old first-rounder cannot send a different prospect down in his place, so this is not a blanket change to the AHL age limit.
Four names stand out heading into 2026-27. Utah’s Caleb Desnoyers, Nashville’s Brady Martin, Seattle’s Jake O’Brien and Vancouver’s Braeden Cootes all went in the top 15 of the 2025 draft, all signed entry-level deals, and all spent last season in major junior.
Each of them can now play a full pro season instead of facing an NHL-or-junior decision in October.
Teams have wanted this for years. A 19-year-old with nothing left to prove in the CHL who still is not ready for an NHL lineup had no step in between, and sending him back to a league he already dominated helped nobody.
College hockey opened one escape hatch. Unsigned CHL players can transfer to the NCAA now, though that door comes with its own eligibility fights, and players already under contract cannot walk through it at all.
Scott Wheeler of The Athletic heard from agents last summer that plenty of their clients would take the AHL over school if the language allowed it:
Training camps open in a few weeks. A handful of 19-year-olds will walk in with a third option on the table for the first time.
