A year ago today, Ryan Leonard was finishing up preseason rookie camp with a about two dozen other young Washington prospects and getting ready for his first NHL training camp. Today, the 21-year-old right wing – the eighth pick overall in the 2023 NHL Draft – signed an eight-year, $84 million contract extension that would keep him in the District through the conclusion of the 2034-35 season. Leonard will be just 30 years old when this deal runs its course.
Leonard has one season remaining on his entry-level contract; today’s pact won’t kick in until the start of the 2027-28 season.
“I think from the player side, it says a lot about Ryan and his character, and what he believes as far as the team we have here,” says Caps senior vice president and general manager Chris Patrick. “I think the trend you saw this summer with a lot of these young forwards is to sign shorter deals – five-year deals, six-year deals – and for him to commit to eight years like this, it really speaks a lot to him as a team player and a team guy, and him really believing in what we’re doing here in Washington.
“And on the flip side, I think it’s another example of Ted [Leonsis] and ownership really stepping up and spending money and making investments to keep this team a competitive team, both now and into the future.”
Today – September 15 – is the final day for players and teams to reach agreements on contracts of eight years in length. The new collective bargaining agreement between the League and the NHLPA kicks in tomorrow, and seven-year contracts will be the new maximum for signing players who already belong to an NHL club. The maximum contract limit for signing unrestricted free agents from other teams drops from seven years to six with the new agreement.
“We started talking in the summer with Leonard’s side, and we presented two different options: a shorter-term option and an eight-year option,” Patrick reveals. “We weren’t sure which way they wanted to go on it, and it just felt like as conversations progressed, that they were definitely open to the longer term if we could get to a value they felt like made sense for them. And so really, for the last couple of weeks of the negotiation, it was really focused on that longer term deal, that eight-year deal, and we were really happy that they were able to go there.”
Leonard is the fifth forward and the eighth player the Caps have signed through at least the 2030-31 season. He is just the third forward the Caps have drafted in the top 10 of an NHL Draft in the last 27 NHL Drafts. Each of the other two players – Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom – also skipped what’s typically known as a “bridge deal” following their respective entry level deals. With Leonard, the Caps were looking at a much smaller body of NHL work – just 84 games to this point – before making the maximum long-term commitment. Clearly, the Caps see him as a crucial piece of their team in the years ahead.
“From an NHL perspective, the analytics and the scout in me would like to see more NHL games obviously, before doing something like this,” says Patrick. “But I think it speaks to how comfortable we are with the character of the kid and the person, and also, there’s a larger body of work there that we’re comfortable with.
“Like most of the players, we’ve been watching him since he was 16 years old, through some fairly major tournaments as a 19- and 20-year-old, being the MVP of the World Juniors and winning gold medals internationally, what he did at [Boston College] and then coming in and scoring 20 goals as an NHL rookie last year. There is always risk when committing to deals like this, but we just felt like with that résumé, we’re comfortable with where we believe he is going to be as a player in two or three years.”
Patrick and the Caps also wanted to be proactive about Leonard’s eventual extension, a feeling that Leonard’s side seemingly shared.
“I don't think we wanted this hanging over our heads for the whole season; I don't think either side did,” Patrick states. “Definitely the conditions are ripe for offer sheets right now. I don't know if that will last or if it's just a shorter-term thing, just because of the combination of the cap increase, and the lack of UFAs. I think at some point it's probably going to balance out again.
“For us, what I don't like about the offer sheet thing is you lose control of the contract. For us, the biggest thing we wanted was term; we wanted a long window with Ryan. We want as many kicks at the can as we can have with him to try to win the Stanley Cup. If you put that into someone else's hands and they put a four-year term on something or a five-year term on something, now you're beholden to that. We just didn't want to get to that point where we were basically beholden to someone else's terms on a deal and didn't have the kind of deal structure that we wanted, so we were glad to get ahead of it.”
Early in his NHL career, Leonard’s speed, his physicality and his shot are all standout attributes. He routinely drew the attention of the opposition, and many foes tried to take him off his game, try to rattle him or test him physically. But he rarely took the bait, and he showed a cool willingness and ability to play through the chaos.
“There are definitely intangibles with him that that make him the player he is, and why a lot of teams around the league really coveted him,” says Patrick. “And you know he's a gamer; he's a guy that likes big game situations. He rises the occasion, and I think you've seen it here in Washington, even in a short time, where he can really elevate his game and take a game over.
“So, as he continues to grow and develop, I think we'll see both the tangible and the intangibles. And I think there's a reason why our fans love him as much as they do. It's because of that intangible piece of this game, that TJ Oshie element of just being a complete gamer and doing whatever it takes to win a puck and make a play and score a goal and win a game.”
In scoring those 20 goals as a rookie last season, Leonard caught fire late. He netted half of his season total after March 1, an indication that he might be on the verge of figuring the League out a bit. The Caps went on a nice 15-7-2 roll in their final 24 games last season, and Leonard’s 10 goals tied Ovechkin for most on the team during that span, and his 15 points were tied for fourth on the club.
It’s easy to project Leonard into a larger role with more ice time during the life of an eight-year deal, even if it doesn’t happen immediately because of the amount of experienced forward depth the Caps added this summer.
“It'll grow and evolve,” says Patrick of Leonard’s future role here. “I think it's important for everyone to remember he's still on his entry level contract this year. This is a year out before this new contract starts, and we have a deep forward group, and [coach Spencer Carbery] has full authority to deploy his forwards as he sees fit. So, like any young player, I'm sure there are going to be ups and downs, as far as the learning curve goes.
“But as we get into two or three years out from here, he should be just entering his prime of his career when a lot of those guys are still on really good deals for our team. So I think it just helps our competitive window to extend beyond just the next two or three years, but further down the road. We're going to be getting prime Ryan Leonard towards the tail end of this contract, and then maybe doing another seven years once this one stops.”
