The Edmonton Oilers are solely focused on the season at hand, but they will have to make a franchise-altering decision as soon as this upcoming summer.
Captain Connor McDavid has one more year left on his current contract after this season, making him eligible to sign an extension with the Oilers on July 1, 2025. This will easily be the biggest storyline for the team heading into the summer, and it will hopefully be resolved sooner rather than later.
At the moment, McDavid currently carries a cap hit of $12.5 million, which was the largest in NHL history when it was signed back in 2017. That number has since been eclipsed with Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon clocking in at $12.6 million and Toronto Maple Leafs sniper carrying a $13.25 million cap hit.
McDavid’s teammate, Leon Draisaitl, will stand above everyone else next season after signing an eight-year extension with the Oilers that includes a $14 million cap hit. These are important numbers as they will inform what McDavid’s asking price will be on his next deal.
Draisaitl’s newest contract is perhaps the most important, as it represents a starting point in negotiations between the Oilers and McDavid. There is no doubt that Edmonton will make their captain the highest-paid player in NHL history when the ink dries on McDavid’s next contract, which means he will have to exceed Draisaitl’s $14 million.
So, what could his next deal look like?
Let’s get the term out of the way. While many superstars have been taking shorter deals in the five-year range, that isn’t how the Oilers have typically operated. Dating back to the days of Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle, Edmonton likes to lock up their superstars to max-term contracts of eight years.
This is how it happened with McDavid and Draisaitl the first time, and the latter also repeated the process last summer. It’s likely that if McDavid signs in Edmonton, it will be for the full eight years.
But where will the cap hit end up on an eight-year deal? We already mentioned that the absolute bare minimum that McDavid will earn on the next deal is around that $14 million range, but all signs point to it being a bit more than that.
It’s no surprise to anybody reading this that McDavid is undisputedly the best player in the world right now. He just recently became the fourth-fastest player in NHL history to reach 1,000 points and is on his way to another season where he should put up at least 120 points, which would be the fourth consecutive season where he has done that.
That said, we shouldn’t expect McDavid to go too far above Draisaitl’s number. One thing that we learned about him during his last contract negotiations is that he is willing to leave money on the table to help the Oilers remain competitive. McDavid could probably demand around $16 million if he decided to test the open market, but that number feels a tad bit unlikely in Edmonton.
Add that to the fact that Draisaitl has shortened the gap between him and McDavid this season with an MVP-calibre season through three months, and those two likely have a closer cap hit than expected at the end of the day.
With all that in mind, let’s say that McDavid signs an eight-year deal with the Oilers this summer that carries a cap hit anywhere in the range of $14.5 million and $15 million. Perhaps that upper echelon could even go as high as $15.5 million.
That would be a considerable raise from his last contract, make him the highest-paid player in the league, and allow the team to remain competitive with a rising cap.
It may seem like a lot to have both McDavid and Draisaitl making over $14 million per year, but that is the price you have to pay if you want to lock up two of the best players in the league for just about the entirety of their careers.