The latest era in history of NHL is known as the “Modern Era”, which is from 1992 to the present. During this time, the 1990s to the 2000s, the NHL expanded to 30 teams. New teams were added in cities such as San Jose, Nashville, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Ottawa, Florida, Anaheim, Atlanta, Columbus, Minnesota, Carolina, and Colorado. There was a first milestone in the history of NHL in 1993, when the NHL got their first commissioner in Gary Bettman. The league became more of a business in the 1990s with sponsorships, more advertisements, and lucrative TV contracts. Also with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, more European players joined the NHL and took the league by storm and improved the competition dramatically. In the 1990s, players like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Steve Yzerman, Mark Messier, along with a combination of younger generation of players from North America and Europe such as Jaromir Jagr, Eric Lindros, Martin Brodeur, Peter Forsberg, Markus Naslund, Sergei Fedorov and Dominik Hasek help the league grow to the point where players were now making multi-million dollar salaries.
Steve Yzerman
Wayne Gretzky
Vincent Lecavalier
Markus Naslund
Jarome Iginla
Daniel Alfredsson
Brendan Shanahan
Brett Hull
Curtis Joseph
Chris Chelios
Niklas Lidstrom
