This past Tuesday – September 15 – marked the final day of the old collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA). As such, it was also the final day that teams could sign their own players for terms of eight years in length. Beginning at midnight on Sept. 15, teams can sign their own players for a maximum of seven years, and they can sign unrestricted free agents for a maximum of six years.
Late Tuesday morning, the Caps announced they had come to terms with sophomore winger Ryan Leonard on an eight-year contract extension worth a total of $84 million (average annual value of $10.5 million). And just hours before that midnight deadline, the Caps snuck one more maximum deal under the wire, signing sophomore forward Justin Sourdif to an eight-year extension worth $50.8 million (AAV of $6.35 million).
The 21-year-old Leonard and the 24-year-old Sourdif are now both under contract through the end of the 2034-35 NHL season. And since both players have a year remaining on their current contracts, those deals don’t kick in until next season. The twin contract extensions obviously make both players part of the team’s core for the better part of the next decade.
Between the end of the 2025-26 regular season in April and Sept. 15, a total of 13 NHL players signed eight-year contracts, and three of them are Washington forwards. In addition to Leonard and Sourdif, the Caps also have recently acquired winger Alex Tuch, who inked an eight-year “sign and trade” deal with Buffalo, which traded the player to Washington on June 24, the day the contract was signed. Tuch’s deal carries the same AAV as Leonard’s.
Washington now has a total of 14 players under contract for at least the next three seasons, and nine of those players – six forwards, two defenseman and a goaltender – have yet to celebrate their 30th birthday.
Since training camp opened on Thursday, Leonard and Sourdif have both spoken with media about the deals that will keep them in the District for the better part of the next decade.
“I love it here, and my family loves coming out here and they just know how happy I am here,” says Leonard. “I can’t thank the organization enough for putting that trust in me, and it’s really exciting to lock in nine more years here.”
“There were talks in early August, and then it kind of went quiet, probably right up until that [Sept. 15] deadline,” recounts Sourdif of his negotiating experience. “I got home from the rink on that cutoff day of the CBA there, and it was six hours of back and forth, and we ended up getting it done before midnight, so I was pretty happy.”
Both Leonard and Sourdif were rookies last season, and both finished the season with 35 or more points, the first rookie duo to do so in the same season for the Capitals since 1981-82. Both players managed a four-point game as a rookie last season, and Sourdif became just the second Washington rookie ever to record a five-point game (three goals, two assists), and the first to do so in over four decades, since Greg Theberge (two goals, three assists) on Nov. 21, 1981.
Both players are just getting started in their respective NHL careers, and both are just scratching the surface of what they might be able to accomplish in the League.
Leonard and Sourdif also showed some chemistry together in their first full NHL season. As rookies, the duo spent 258 minutes and 13 seconds skating on a line together, and they – and whomever their other linemate was at the time – outscored the opposition by a combined 19-8 (70.37%) while they shared the ice together. They did so despite being under water in Corsi (46.59%), shots for (47.89%), scoring chances for (45.75%), and high danger chances for (40.59%). The duo also saw just 37.14% of its face-offs in the offensive zone last season. (All numbers via Natural Stat Trick.)
As rookies on the ice together, the duo’s most frequent linemates were the now departed Connor McMichael (99 minutes and 36 seconds) and Anthony Beauvillier (69 minutes, 18 seconds).
As camp gets underway this season, Leonard is skating the right side of a line with Alex Ovechkin and Dylan Strome and Sourdif is centering for Boone Jenner and Beauvillier.
While the salaries of both players took a leap and next season’s numbers may seem eye-popping, it’s merely the new normal in the NHL. After half a decade with a relatively flat salary cap and marginal overall salary growth, the League is now generating more revenue, which in turn fuels cap growth.
“First and foremost, guys are ecstatic for Sourdie and Leno for earning those contracts, and I think they're just so happy and celebrating together,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “And I think too, what everybody has seen in the hockey world is the economics of our sport are changing quickly, and so these deals that you're seeing, and even players such as Ryan Leonard and Justin Sourdif, having played one year in the NHL, are signing long-term lucrative contracts, and that's just the environment that we live in now as a sport of hockey, and it's good.
“I think some people look at it as, ‘Oh, these contracts are going up so quickly. What about the guys that signed four years ago that aren't [getting that kind of money]? But the players are happy for each other because at the end of the day, the sport’s growing, revenue is increased. And everybody is going to earn more from that, so it's a good situation for our sport. And I’m happy, obviously, for Sourdie and Leno to get those deals, and they're going to be a part of this organization for a long time to come.”
When Washington won the Stanley Cup in 2017-18, Evgeny Kuznetsov (aged 25 that season) was in the first year of an eight-year extension of his own, and that pact ($7.8 million AAV) ate up 10.4% of the total salary cap of $75 million that season. That’s less than Leonard’s contract will consume next season (9.25%) when the cap climbs to $113.5 million.
Ex-Caps pivot Lars Eller was the team’s third line center in 2017-18, and his $3.5 million annual cap hit was just 4.7% of the total, not far beneath where Sourdif’s number (5.6%) will come in next season. Eller played 551 games with the Caps, producing an average of 33 points per 82 games during that time. Sourdif exceeded that point total in his age 23 season while averaging 14:44 per night in ice time across 78 games. Eller averaged 15:21 per game across his tenure in a Washington sweater.
It’s also worth noting that both Leonard and Sourdif will be playing an 84-game schedule – two more than the Caps have played in any full season in the last three decades – for the remainder of the current CBA at least. And obviously, math being math, those percentages will decline over the life of those eight-year extensions.
“We obviously plan for the cap, not only this year but in future years when we do these deals,” says Caps senior vice president and general manager Chris Patrick. “We definitely feel comfortable about where these numbers are, and then we’ll just see how things play out over the next few years, and also with potential expansion drafts on the horizon, whenever those might be.
“It’s always good to have a good group of players, because you’re going to lose somebody here at some point for nothing. We factor all of those things in when we look at these deals.”
Camp Notes: Veteran defenseman Jacob MacDonald was moved from Group B to Group A for Friday’s day two of training camp. “We just added an extra [defenseman]. They had a tougher day [Thursday] having five [forward] lines in the first group and only four sets of [defensemen]. We just added one.”
Carbery also noted that during Saturday’s practice session – the last before Washington plays back-to-back exhibition games on Sunday at Boston and Monday at Hershey against Philadelphia – the Caps will begin special teams work, and we will see what the coaching staff has in mind for deployment of personnel on those special teams units.
