If you’re a hockey fan who has been keeping up with contract signings in the men’s NHL over the summer, you may have noticed lots of big words and numbers being thrown around. Phrases like “highest-paid player in the NHL” and “large signing bonuses” and “offer sheets” and “20 million” have been all over men’s hockey news, especially if you follow Elliotte Friedman on social media. First of all, for the purposes of this article, please know that I am primarily comparing the average annual values — or AAV — of each contract, though total value, cap percentage, and term length are also important statistics of note here. Since the AAV of a contract also typically designates the cap hit for the player during the term of his contract, I will be using the terms interchangeably here. Finally, it is important to note that these large contracts are only now becoming available to NHL players, as its salary cap continues to increase every year.
Depending on who you ask, this all started with either Leon Draisaitl in September of 2024, or with Kirill Kaprizov in September 2025. I would tend towards blaming Kaprizov’s camp, considering his contract took a three-million-dollar AAV leap up to 17 million from Draisaitl’s 14 in just one calendar year. By signing a contract with such a significant increase from the previous highest AAV, the door was suddenly opened for more seemingly star-caliber players to demand even more money than Kaprizov. Thus, this summer, there were three new contracts signed with a greater AAV than that of Kaprizov: Leo Carlsson (ANA), Macklin Celebrini (SJS), and Cale Makar (COL). And hey, if you look at two of the most well-known true superstars in the NHL, Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon? They both currently only have cap hits of approximately 12.5 million AAV.
Since the conclusion of the 2026 Stanley Cup finals (and as of the completion of this article on Sept. 19), there have been 11 contracts with cap hits of 10 million dollars or greater per year: Makar, Celebrini, Carlsson, Alex Tuch (BUF), Pavel Dorofeyev (NYR), Drake Batherson (OTT), Ryan Leonard (WSH), Jason Robertson (DAL), Connor Bedard (CHI), Nico Hischier (NJD), Cutter Gauthier (ANA), and Bowen Byram (CHI). Cale Makar is now the highest-paid player in the NHL by AAV, with his contract coming in at a cap hit of 20.4 million for eight years.
My favorite story to tell about all this has to be that of Leo Carlsson, 21-year-old center for the Anaheim Ducks, who was the highest-paid player (and is still by AAV) for a short time until the Celebrini and Makar contracts came along. Really understanding the levels of tomfoolery going on here requires a good bit of context, so let’s go all the way back to the 2022 NHL Draft, when the Philadelphia Flyers picked Cutter Gauthier fifth overall from the U.S. National Development Team Program. Gauthier also played two years for Boston College in the NCAA, and that’s where things get interesting. On Jan. 8, 2024, Cutter Gauthier was traded to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for fan-favorite defenseman Jamie Drysdale and a second round pick in the 2025 draft, which the Flyers used to pick Jack Murtagh, a current left winger at Boston University. Reports soon after the trade stated that Gauthier refused to play for Philadelphia, forcing the Flyers between a rock and a hard place. This establishes some of the bad blood between the Anaheim and Philly organizations, which only deepened on July 3 this year when the Flyers front office offer-sheeted restricted free agent Leo Carlsson. The offer: an 18 MILLION AAV contract for five years, another entire million larger than the Kaprizov contract.
Why five years, you may ask? Well, that would put the currently 21-year-old Carlsson at the age of 26 upon his contract ending, meaning his time as a restricted free agent would be up and he would no longer be subject to potential offer sheets or other negotiation complications.
So, the million dollar question — or 18 million dollar question — was, what on earth are the Ducks going to do??? If they kept Carlsson, they put themselves in cap hell while still attempting to hold onto other young players, like the aforementioned Gauthier. On the other hand, if they lost him, they would be losing a player with proven applicable NHL skills to one of their most heated rivals of the past decade, with no guarantee of effectively replacing him. In accordance with NHL offer sheet guidelines, the Flyers would have compensated the Ducks with four first round picks over the next four seasons, but there is never a guarantee that any first round pick is able to develop into a successful NHL player. Ultimately, the Ducks chose to match the Flyers’ offer sheet, thus keeping Carlsson in California but also forcing them to move other players to stay under the salary cap for the year. The Flyers, then, maintained their status quo around a core of young upcoming players, and earned the satisfaction of publicly irritating their least favorite adversaries.
So, does all of this mean the NHL is headed for certain financial doom and a lockout in the next few years? Not necessarily. In fact, some of these shenanigans took place this summer so that general managers could beat the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that went into effect on Sept. 16. The new CBA designates a max contract term of seven years instead of the previous maximum of eight, a term length which was observed by the Makar, Leonard, and Batherson contracts, among plenty of others. Changes were also made to contract structuring in the CBA, again to prevent future psychological warfare between general managers like Daniel Briere achieved this year. Overall, the NHL should be on course for continued financial improvement without forcing players and teams into difficult positions, and this year was likely a quirk of circumstance. Luckily for me and other fans, it was a very entertaining fluke to watch (unless you are a Ducks fan).
Featured image: Betty Cavicchia’28
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