After the NHL trade deadline, teams only get four regular call-ups from their affiliates for the rest of the regular season. However, there are exceptions.

When the clock struck 3 p.m. ET on March 3, the rules regarding recalling players from the AHL changed. There have been more glimpses of emergency loans than before, and they don't all have to do with the salary cap.

Four Regular Recalls After the Deadline

After the deadline until the end of the regular season, NHL teams are only permitted four regular player recalls.

While teams keep this in mind when contemplating personnel moves — they’re not going to use all their call-ups frivolously — it’s not as much of a barrier as one would think.

These regular recalls exclude instances when a team needs a skater or goalie due to injury. Teams can still bring up a player by exercising an emergency recall when an NHL club's roster has fewer than two goalies, six defensemen and 12 forwards healthy. The player will have to be returned promptly after the game, but they can be recalled again in time for the next game.

Plus, how often do teams make personnel moves where they recall a player and send another one down in circumstances where they have a healthy roster? It happens, of course, but not enough that four regular recalls from here on out won’t suffice. 

For example, the Boston Bruins have recalled forward Jakub Lauko several times — but after the deadline, the call-ups were classified as emergency recalls, given that Boston’s roster is shorthanded after injuries to Nick Foligno and Taylor Hall.

There were also paper transactions at the trade deadline, where teams assigned players to the AHL to be eligible for that league for the rest of the season and playoffs. NHL clubs quickly recalled many of those players after 3 p.m. ET on March 3, which counts as one of their four recalls if they weren’t eligible for an emergency call-up.

Some notable paper transactions we saw this year include Quinton Byfield, Jakob Pelletier and Mads Sogaard.

Playoff Rules

Once the post-season begins, NHL teams can make as many regular recalls as they want, as they are not constrained by a roster limit. That's why teams travel with extra players known as black aces come playoff time. 

For example, if the Toronto Marlies got knocked out of the Calder Cup playoffs while the Maple Leafs were still in the Stanley Cup playoffs — there is no limit to the number of recalls Toronto could make from their AHL affiliate. 

However, the NHL/NHLPA collective bargaining agreement notes an NHL club can have no more than three players on its active playoff roster who were regular recalls after the trade deadline. But if a team has four recalled players while adhering to the emergency recall loophole at the end of the season, those players can stay on the active roster heading into the playoffs.

In other words, if the team has four recalled players at the beginning of the playoffs, they can keep them in the NHL. If the team wants to make a change, however, the CBA forces them to go down to three recalled players. In that case, two players must be reassigned to recall someone else.

There is also no salary cap in the playoffs. This came to light in the 2020-21 season when the Tampa Bay Lightning activated Nikita Kucherov off the LTIR right when the playoffs began. Whether Kucherov was fully recovered or not, it helped them avoid dealing with cap overages that would’ve occurred had he been activated during the regular season.

This factors into recalling players from the AHL as well. Even if it would put the team over the salary cap in the regular season, it's permitted in the playoffs.