Last week the NHL announced massive jumps to the salary cap coming over the next three seasons: $95.5 million in 2025-26, $104 million in 2026-27, and $113.5 million in 2027-28. This is a huge deal, one that carries immense implications for the league’s contract landscape.
Players are about to get paid, none more so than the league’s very best: Connor McDavid. His current deal ends in 2026, just in time for the cap to jump over $100 million. McDavid’s next deal will be seismic, there’s no doubt about that. The question is just how high his salary will go. Can he be the NHL’s first $20 million player?
That’s a mind-boggling number at the moment, but this is the best player in the world we’re talking about. In an exploding cap environment, he’s worth a whole lot.
A league-max deal is 20 percent of the cap and during the 2026-27 season that amounts to $20.8 million. According to my model, McDavid is currently the only player in the league projected to be worth 20 percent of the cap or more. He’s the league’s only blank check player and in 2026-27 would have a projected value of $21.3 million.
Normally, a player’s age (McDavid will be 29 at the time of signing) would be a big factor in any contract projection. At some point on any long-term deal, McDavid’s value will drop below league-max value and that could happen as soon as Year 3 or 4. McDavid being an extreme outlier at the top of the league could mean there’s more room to drop than modeled, too. But with a rapidly rising cap, McDavid’s decline will likely be much slower than the rapid growth of the salary cap’s upper limit.
Everything depends on how much the salary cap continues to grow after 2027-28, but even the most conservative outlook puts McDavid north of $20 million on a long-term deal. On average, McDavid is expected to be worth 18.5 percent of the cap on an eight-year deal. A $20 million deal comes out to 15.8 percent on average on the aggressive side (5 percent growth) but could be as high as 16.9 percent on average on the conservative side (2 percent growth).
In either case, McDavid would be well worth it. On the conservative side, he’s worth $21.8 million over eight seasons. On the aggressive side, his average value comes out to $23.5 million. That’s a huge number, but it’s worth noting that at 5 percent growth, a $20 million contract would be worth 15 percent of the cap by Year 5 of a new McDavid deal. In fact, it already drops to 17.6 percent in Year 2 at the already-planned increase to $113.5 million.
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