Rising NHL salaries have teams adjusting fiscal planning on the fly

Record revenues. A salary cap that goes up each season. Contracts with annual average values never seen before in the NHL.

The League's continued growth is leading to greater wealth for the power brokers in the game, most notably the players. But that growth also is forcing teams to reconsider their own fiscal planning.

"Yeah, the five-year plan that we did in February, we just threw that in the trash; we have to redo it because of where salaries are going," Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell said.

The Blue Jackets are one example of a team that has had to adjust its cap calculating because of the inflating salaries.

They signed center Adam Fantilli to a six-year, $82.5 million contract Sept. 24.

The average annual value of Fantilli's contract is $13.75 million, just $250,000 less than Leon Draisaitl's $14 million AAV, which was an NHL record when he signed his eight-year, $112 million contract with the Edmonton Oilers on Sept. 3, 2024.

Draisaitl was 28 and had 850 points (347 goals, 503 assists) in 719 regular-season games and 108 points (41 goals, 67 assists) in 74 games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs when he signed.

Fantilli is 21 and entered the season with 140 points (67 goals, 73 assists) in 213 NHL games. He hasn't been to the playoffs.

"When we did the deal with Leon a couple summers ago his agents were saying, 'You guys are getting a great deal, it's (the cap) going to go way up,'" Oilers CEO and president Jeff Jackson said. "I mean, 14 (million) at the time was the highest number in the League. They were right."

The Blue Jackets might have to exceed $20 million per season to keep Norris Trophy-winning defenseman Zach Werenski, who is eligible to sign a new contract July 1.

With Fantilli signed and plans to give Werenski a massive deal, the Blue Jackets couldn't be compelled to give forward Kirill Marchenko big money too as he was in line to become a restricted free agent after this season.

They traded Marchenko to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Sept. 28, getting forward Matthew Knies back as part of the return. Marchenko signed a six-year contract with Toronto that will pay him $12.5 million annually. Knies makes $7.75 million annually through 2030-31.

"I can remember my first year negotiating a contract and arguing over $5,000 and I lost sleep over it," Waddell said. "Now we're arguing over millions of dollars. It's changed. It's going to continue to evolve."

The salary explosion really began before last season, when Minnesota Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov signed an 8-year contract extension with a $17 million AAV.

It was a record-setting contract, with the highest AAV ever at the time, but Kaprizov didn’t even get to Year 1 of that contract (this season) before it was topped three times in less than two months.

On July 3, the Philadelphia Flyers signed Anaheim Ducks forward Leo Carlsson to a five-year offer sheet with an $18 million AAV. The Ducks matched that offer July 9.

On July 29, Macklin Celebrini signed a five-year contract with the Sharks that carried an AAV of $18.8 million.

Less than a month later, on Aug. 28, Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar signed an eight-year deal with a $20.4 million AAV.

"I almost feel like for the players and contract size, salary, obviously this offseason the dam broke a little bit," Jackson said. "Maybe it's a bunch of things, a confluence of events where revenues are such that are driving up the cap, the cap is moving pretty quick, guys were up at the right time, offer sheets, all of those things. And players saying I'm willing to take more than I have in the past. So it's a little bit surprising that it's gone so fast, but I think a lot of it had to do with what happened with Carlsson and everything flowed from that."

It is expected to continue to flow through the next wave of superstar players who are eligible, or will be soon, to sign new contracts.

Quinn Hughes is next.

He can sign a new deal with the Minnesota Wild at any time this season, but if he’s still unsigned on July 1, he will become an unrestricted free agent and a likely bidding war will ensue. Hughes, who won the Norris Trophy as the best defenseman in the NHL in with the Vancouver Canucks in 2023-24, was traded to the Wild on Dec. 12, 2025.

Nikita Kucherov, who won the Hart Trophy as the League's most valuable player last season, is also in the last season of his deal with the Tampa Bay Lightning and can re-sign any time this season. If not, he too becomes an unrestricted free agent.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement allows players to sign for up to 20 percent of the in-season salary cap (currently $104 million), which means the max AAV for a player signing this season is $20.8 million.

Werenski, Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers and Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs will be eligible to re-sign with their current teams July 1, when the expected AAV cap will be $22.7 million, or 20 percent of next season's projected $113.5 million salary cap.

If they wait and become unrestricted free agents in the summer of 2028, the AAV cap might be $25.5 million based on a $127.5 million projected salary cap, according to a report from Sportsnet.

The point being that it’s more likely than not that Makar's record AAV might soon barely crack the top five in the League.

"It sets the market, right," Werenski said. "Every year someone sets the market and Cale set it for a group of defensemen this year. … If you're Quinn right now in this moment where you can extend he's probably thinking about it, and a year from now hopefully I'm in a similar situation. I think it's great for the League, it's great for defensemen, it's great for a number of us that are up in the next year or two."

Said Wild forward Matt Boldy, "Three years ago, ($20 million) would seem like a big number. But right now it seems very, very fair."

Boldy is one of the reasons why the Wild even can consider signing Hughes when they already have Kaprizov on their books.

The 25-year-old is in the fourth season of a seven-year, $49 million contract ($7 million AAV). He had 85 points (42 goals, 43 assists) in 76 games last season and had two goals and an assist in seven games this season entering Thursday.

Boldy signed when the League was dealing with a flat cap, a result of the financial impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The cap in the first year of Boldy's contract was $83.5 million. It is expected to be $30 million higher than that next season.

There have been 32 players who signed contracts with a higher AAV than Boldy's $7 million since the end of last season, including 13 who are 22 years old or younger.

Many of them, including Washington Capitals forward Ryan Leonard (eight years, $10.5 million AAV), Boston Bruins center Fraser Minten (seven years, $7.2 million AAV), Vancouver Canucks defenseman Zeev Buium (eight years, $9.38 million AAV) and Ducks defenseman Tristan Luneau (six years, $7.2 million AAV), are projection signings, with their teams looking to get ahead of the rising cap, thinking what is a high AAV for production to date will turn into great value later.

"It's crazy how much it's changed, but it just shows how many fans and how great the League's been over the last five years," Canucks forward Brock Boeser said. "We've really grown a lot."

The year-over-year growth in the salary cap eventually will taper off even if revenues continue to grow, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, because the current cap inflation, resulting in soaring dollars in contracts, is a result of the League catching up from the flat-cap era.

"Once we recapture it, which will take probably two more years, give or take, then it'll go up at the same rate as revenues grow," Commissioner Bettman said.

Until that happens, there likely will be more record-setting contracts, with mid-level players earning bigger money than ever before too.

If revenues continue to rise, the cap will too, if at a slower pace than currently, and the League and the power brokers in it, players included, will continue to reap the rewards.

"The fact that the highest paid player has changed four times in a year, that means it's going to keep changing probably every couple of months now," New Jersey Devils center Jack Hughes said. "No matter where you are in the lineup, I have to think the money goes up."