The Edmonton Oilers got a major piece of work done earlier this week by signing forward Leon Draisaitl to an eight-year, $112MM contract to keep him in Alberta through his age-37 season. They will have to visit a similar situation in a year with captain Connor McDavid as he will be eligible to sign an extension with the Oilers on July 1, 2025.
McDavid may very well break Alex Ovechkin’s record of $124MM total salary on his next deal as the expectation is that he will become the highest-paid player in the league at the very least. The salary cap for the 2025-26 NHL season is expected to land around $92MM which would theoretically allow Edmonton to pay McDavid a maximum of $18.4MM a season. McDavid would only have to receive $15.5MM a year over an eight-year term to match Ovechkin’s record.
It doesn’t sound like McDavid is interested in receiving the maximum 20% of the total cap as he avoided that salary during his last negotiations with the Oilers. On his most recent episode of the ’32 Thoughts’ podcast, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said, “The story I always heard about Connor McDavid’s last negotiation, Jeff Jackson is now the President of the Oilers, he was the agent at the time, and, you know, one of the things they said was, the maximum any player can be paid at the cap is 20% and at the time, they said, we’re not going to ask for 20% and the Oilers are like, ‘Oh, Thank God.’ And because if he would have asked for 20% they would have paid it. But McDavid wasn’t interested in that“.
McDavid’s desire to win likely plays a part in his avoiding a record-setting salary up to this point. If the former sought the max salary, the Oilers would only have around 65% of their cap space left to put together a competitive team around McDavid and Draisaitl.
As much fun as it would be to see McDavid become an unrestricted free agent in two years, there is no reason to doubt his commitment to Edmonton. All signs are pointing to the Oilers extending McDavid as quickly as they can, especially after making such a strong commitment to Draisaitl. He won’t come cheap though as McDavid will likely become the highest-paid player of all time on his next contract.
He’s worth the farm
Yeah, I don’t know why I see so many commenters here try to act like McDavid or others are greedy for wanting something like $12-16 million a season. He’s the best player in hockey and at $15 million a year he’s making about what the 4th best player on the New York Knicks makes. It really is a joke.
A mediocre starting pitcher in MLB makes that.
Of course he is, but he knows the Oilers need to sign 17 other guys, and he wants to remain competitive. He sees what’s happening in Toronto.
Edmonton has gotten to the Stanley Cup finals while Toronto has only gotten past the 1st round once.