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The salaries in the HockeyZonePlus database were gathered over the years from multiple sources including, but not limited to: The Hockey News, USA Today, La Presse, The Sporting News, the Canadian Press, the Montreal Gazette, Le Droit, Guide Hockey, Maclean's, Inside Hockey, the Globe and Mail, SportingNewsRadio, the NHLPA, Pro Hockey Alumni podcast, Spittin' Chiclets podcast, Drette su'l tape podcast, My Dad Used to Play Hockey podcast, 50 Year Ago in Hockey podcast, and multiple other newspapers, books, magazines, hockey yearbooks, podcasts, and radio/TV shows.

We are constantly on the lookout for NHL salary information, especially for seasons prior to 1989 when they became publicly disclosed. If you'd like to contribute pre-1989 salary information about a player, or provide corrections to salaries in the HockeyZonePlus database, please contact us with the information and references to verifiable sources (newspaper, magazine, book, etc.). We will verify and include it in the database as appropriate.

Special thanks to Jason Strushensky for providing sources of information for the salary of multiple players in the Prehistoric Salaries section!

Glossary:

  • Salary ($US): Salary in $US, not including bonuses. Information on bonuses, if available, is provided as a note under the salary. Salaries paid in Canadian currency by Canadian teams, prior to the late-90s, were converted to $US per the exchange rate of the given seasons (source: Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System (CANSIM) and Bank of Canada).
  • In today's $: Today's dollar values of salaries are provided as points of reference to show the equivalent, in today's purchasing power, of players' past salaries. They are calculated using the following formula, based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)’s historical record of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since 1913: (current CPI / CPI of original year) x original salary = today's dollar value.
  • NHL Rank: Where the player's salary ranked among all NHLers that season.
  • +/- ($): Salary increase or decrease, in dollars, compared to the previous season.
  • +/- (%): Percentage of salary increase or decrease, compared to the previous season.
  • Total: Sum of all yearly NHL salaries. We call it "NHL Fortune." They call it "Financial security for their families."
  • Total in today's dollars: Sum of all yearly NHL salaries in today's dollar. It's just a point of reference. Making $1M in 1960 bought you more than making $1M now.
  • Total NHL Rank: Where the player's total salary ranks among all NHLers in the HockeyZonePlus database which has salaries of virtually all NHLers that played since 1989 and only some (but growing) pre-1989 salaries. 
  • Total NHL Rank in today's dollars: Where the player's total salary, in today's dollars, ranks among all NHLers in the HockeyZonePlus database which has salaries of virtually all NHLers that played since 1989 and only some (but growing) pre-1989 salaries. 

Important Notes:

  • HockeyZonePlus is not affiliated with the NHL, NHLPA or any NHL club and is maintained for research purposes only.
  • While the salaries listed closely reflect reality, they are not necessarily exact. We are not the Internal Revenue Service or the Canada Revenue Agency.
  • Generally speaking, somebody's "net worth" is everything he/she owns (assets) minus what he/she owes in debts (liabilities). HockeyZonePlus' database therefore does not provide players' net worth. It only provides information on pre-tax hockey-related salaries.
  • Some players have two-way contracts and have received lower salaries than those listed when playing in farm clubs.
  • In 1994-95 and 2012-13, each team played only 48 games because of lockouts. Although unlikely, some players possibly had contracts stipulating that they were paid for the full season despite a lockout but we have no information in that regard. Therefore, the salaries shown for those 2 seasons are pro-rated to reflect that players were paid for only a portion of the seasons.
  • During the 2004-05 lockout, some players joined various teams in North America and Europe and were paid to do so. It is not included in the database because we have no information about the salaries they made in those leagues.