For nearly two decades, the discourse with superstar NHL players has been they are underpaid relative to their impact in the league’s salary cap world.
That has started to change, and this summer will be remembered as a significant move forward for the league’s top talents. Cale Makar’s new contract with the Colorado Avalanche was the latest and largest move to reset the top of the market: an eight-year, $163.2 million pact that, for now, is the richest in NHL history.
The second number in the contract elicited plenty of reactions around the league shortly after the deal was announced Friday, but the first number — the term — was a big part of why this contract could prove to be a shrewd one for the Avs.
“It was about getting to a good, fair number and then providing that term to give some cost certainty to the team to be able to build around it and get through some of those years where the bigger contracts are coming up,” said Brian Bartlett, who along with his father Steve and brother Scott, represents Makar. “It gives (the Avs) flexibility instead of coming up the same time (Nathan MacKinnon) does or the year before Nate does and then all of a sudden the number is $26 million, $27 million instead of locking in at today’s prices.
“It is high enough to still be world-changing, generational-changing money but then to lock in for eight years was the give-back in exchange for the high AAV.”
That was a theme of Colorado’s press conference Monday afternoon, when Avs president/general manager Joe Sakic and Makar discussed the new contract. Makar is the NHL’s first $20 million man, with a $20.4 million cap hit that begins in 2027-28 and runs through 2035.
The bet from the Avs is that others will soon join Makar and pass him as the cap ceiling continues to rise. The NHL went through a stagnant period after the COVID-19 pandemic, but the ceiling is now expected to spike annually in the coming seasons.
“Taking the eight years … you see a lot of deals trending a little bit shorter now with some of the bigger contracts,” Makar said. “I felt like, for me, it was kind of that trade-off of wanting to give the team stability over the entire contract and being able to build around that. For myself too, showing my commitment here and how much that I’ve loved it here and everything. I think for me that was never a question. I kind of always wanted those eight years.”
Both sides said the initial conversations about the contract began in early July, when Makar was first eligible to sign a new contract. There was a deadline if the deal was going to be eight years — Sept. 15 is the last day players are eligible for them before a new seven-year maximum arrives with a new collective bargaining agreement on Sept. 16.
Still, waiting until later in the summer helped this deal land where it did. Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov signing for $17 million per year this past September signaled a new era for superstar contracts, but Connor Bedard, Leo Carlsson and Macklin Celebrini all signing for between $15 million and $18.8 million helped cement where things are trending for franchise players.
“The market changed drastically this summer,” Bartlett said. “Some of those contracts were more than people expected. Part of it was a conscious effort on our part to not rush into anything. There was no urgency to get it done two months before camp instead of two weeks before. We wanted to kind of wait and see what the market would look like, and it probably made the team feel more comfortable about it too.
“I think it helped everyone feel comfortable with where the trajectory of salaries are going. While it is a really big number, we have every confidence in Cale and his ability that at some point as this plays out, he’s going to be underpaid during this contract at some point and maybe sooner rather than later.”
Now the Avs have their top three players — MacKinnon, Makar, and Martin Necas — all locked in together for the next five seasons. Their combined cap hit for the first four years of Makar’s deal will be $44.5 million. That’s a lot — easily the highest in the NHL right now — but other clubs will eventually close that gap.
They will account for about 39% of the cap in 2027-28, and that share should decrease each year going forward. If the Avs do not win the Stanley Cup again in the near future, critics will likely point to the top-heavy construction as one of the issues.
Sakic is willing to take that bet and see how it plays out.
“You can’t win without superstars,” Sakic said. “Yeah, you need depth. You need your team playing really well at the right time. When it comes to playoffs, you need bounces, but you need your players to be healthy. We ran into the injury bug a little bit last year, especially with Cale. We had a bad week that cost us, but we had a team that was built to win. Didn’t happen, and we expect our team to be built to win for a long time.
“Unless you have guys like Cale and Nate on your team, it makes it a lot harder.”
