{"id":8078,"date":"2025-09-18T18:19:51","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T18:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/?p=8078"},"modified":"2025-09-18T18:24:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T18:24:42","slug":"nhl-nhlpa-alumni-association-unveil-healthcare-and-wellness-fund-for-retirees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/?p=8078","title":{"rendered":"NHL, NHLPA, Alumni Association unveil Healthcare and Wellness Fund for retirees"},"content":{"rendered":"<b>LAS VEGAS &#8212;<\/b> The NHL, NHL Players\u2019 Association and NHL Alumni Association are teaming up to make sure all retired NHL players can get health care long after their careers are over.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s just a real great story about all of the groups coming together to make a big difference for NHL players that are the foundation of the game,\u201d said Glenn Healy, president and executive director of the NHLAA.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is like Christmas Day for us.\u201d\r\n\r\nHealy, along with NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey, met with reporters during the NHL\/NHLPA North American Player Media Tour to discuss the unveiling of the Retired Players Emergency Healthcare and Wellness Fund on Tuesday.\r\n\r\nThe fund, which will see the NHL and NHLPA each contribute $2 million annually, is included in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that was ratified July 8. The new CBA begins next season and runs through 2029-30.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat has been handed to me is the ability to make tomorrow better than today for a bunch of players,\u201d Healy said. \u201cAnd to give help and hope to guys that you watched, you wrote about, you covered.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe NHL career, it\u2019s a short career, but a long life and they don\u2019t kind of collide at times.\u201d\r\n\r\nAccording to the MOU, $2 million will go annually to the Emergency Assistance Fund, specifically designated to assist NHLAA members facing catastrophic health issues without insurance coverage and experiencing financial hardship. The other $2 million will be designated to identify resources and programs to provide wellness support for NHLAA members, regardless of where they reside.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe certainly recognize at the League the importance of our history and the men who made that history and formed the foundation for the success we\u2019re having today,\u201d Daly said. \u201cOur work with the Alumni Association has grown leaps and bounds over the years.\u201d\r\n\r\nHainsey said the process of establishing the Retired Players Emergency Healthcare and Wellness Fund picked up steam when Marty Walsh became executive director of the NHLPA on Feb. 16, 2023.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is something Glenn has been passionate about since that day,\u201d Hainsey said. &#8220;We don\u2019t know if we discussed it a ton previous to that, and Glenn\u2019s obviously had his conversations with [NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman] and Bill throughout this time. But it was an area we identified then. There was a lot going on when Martin started, but here we are, a little bit later then Glenn would have preferred, but we got there.\u201d\r\n\r\nDaly said the League and NHLPA have been \u201cequal partners\u201d in this process of taking care of retired players, starting with the supplemental gifting program, which came out of the 2004-05 work stoppage.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been partners since that time and we\u2019ve increased significantly in the amounts of those funds to cover all the players,\u201d Daly said. \u201cIt would have been easy for the Players\u2019 Association to take the position of, \u2018You guys (the League) can pay for it.\u2019 But that\u2019s not the approach they took, so I appreciate their cooperation over the years in this. It\u2019s a recognition of how important the efforts and the initiative is and are.\u201d\r\n\r\nHealy, a goalie who played 437 games for the Los Angeles Kings, New York Islanders, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs from 1985 to 2001, said that 787 former players who didn\u2019t have a pension will now be covered.\r\n\r\n\u201cEvery player will have the ability to have a family doctor through Zoom, whether you played one shift or 10,000 games,\u201d Healy said. &#8220;You have the ability to have a mental wellness professional within 30 minutes on Zoom, so if you don\u2019t feel comfortable call me or our medical teams, you\u2019ll have that ability.\u201d\r\n\r\nHainsey was a defenseman who played 1,132 games for the Montreal Canadiens, Columbus Blue Jackets, Atlanta Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets, Carolina Hurricanes, Pittsburgh Penguins, Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators from 2002-20. He joined the NHLPA in April 2021 and was promoted to assistant executive director May 19, 2023.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is just another step for former players or current players that we\u2019re focused on health and wellness in their post-career lives,\u201d Hainsey said. \u201cThe idea is when our players do leave the game in the future that they are in a totally different situation for their post-career lives.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs Glenn said, hockey and life don\u2019t necessarily line up all that well.\u201d\r\n\r\nSaid Healy: \u201cWe take care of our own. No one will walk alone.\u201d\r\n\r\n<!-- \/wp:post-content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LAS VEGAS &#8212; The NHL, NHL Players\u2019 Association and NHL Alumni Association are teaming up to make sure all retired NHL players can get health care long after their careers are over. &nbsp; \u201cIt\u2019s just a real great story about all of the groups coming together to make a big difference for NHL players that &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8079,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8078"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8168,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8078\/revisions\/8168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nhlalumni.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}