Aarif Deen
The ever-changing landscape of NHL salaries received a major jolt on Friday when the Philadelphia Flyers tendered a five-year, $90 million offer sheet to young Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson.
The $18 million AAV is the highest in NHL history, and it might only be the next step in the league’s rapidly escalating salary structure for superstars.
That affects more than just the next wave of stars like Connor Bedard, Macklin Celebrini, Adam Fantilli and Cutter Gauthier. It could also reshape the market for established stars who are due for new contracts, including Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar and even Nikita Kucherov.
Basically, yes, I do think this has some impact on Makar’s next contract.
I can’t say for certain that Makar and his representatives were already planning to top Kirill Kaprizov’s previous NHL-record $17 million AAV, although Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic believes he will.
But even if Makar’s camp had been targeting something below Kaprizov—say somewhere between Leon Draisaitl’s $14 million and $17 million—Carlsson’s contract probably nudges that number higher. Maybe it was $15 million before. Now perhaps it’s $15.5 million or even $16 million.
As much as we’d like to think one contract doesn’t affect another, history says otherwise.
When Mikko Rantanen and the Avalanche were negotiating an extension two summers ago, the market shifted the moment Draisaitl reached $14 million. That became the new benchmark, and naturally it became the number Rantanen’s camp worked from. I’m not saying Makar’s negotiations will end the same way Rantanen’s did, but players and agents pay close attention to these contracts. The market adjusts in real time.
The NHL is changing.
For years, it took forever for the salary ceiling to move. Nathan MacKinnon didn’t surpass Connor McDavid’s $12.5 million cap hit until more than five years later, and he only exceeded it by $100,000 annually. Auston Matthews pushed the number to $13.25 million the following year. Draisaitl reached $14 million another year later, and Kaprizov jumped to $17 million 12 months after that.
That’s not how most professional sports operate.
In the NFL, the highest-paid quarterback changes hands constantly. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, the title passed from Aaron Rodgers to Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love and Dak Prescott before Patrick Mahomes ultimately became the league’s highest-paid player at $64.1 million per year.
The NHL finally appears to be heading in that direction.
I don’t think it’ll take another year for someone to top Carlsson’s deal. It might not even take a month. We could see Celebrini eclipse $18 million before the summer is over. It’s hard to even imagine what Hughes might be asking out of Minnesota.
As for Makar, he has every reason to become the NHL’s first $20 million player. The maximum salary under the current CBA is roughly $20.6 million.
Whether he actually wants to go that high is an entirely different question. Still, things are changing fast, and like many teams with superstar players up for an extension, the Colorado Avalanche are stuck in the middle of all of this.