NHL's $10m Contracts Multiply as Salary Cap Surges
New deals for Cutter Gauthier, Drake Batherson and Ryan Leonard show why 35 NHL players now earn $10m or more per season, up from 20 a year ago.
NHL clubs signed three long-term contracts with forwards on 15 September, and each figure sits well above what the market expected a year ago.
Anaheim Ducks gave Cutter Gauthier a six-year deal worth an average of $13.5m a season. Ottawa Senators extended Drake Batherson for eight years at $10.75m a season. Washington Capitals matched that length for Ryan Leonard, at $10.5m a season.
A salary of $10m a year no longer marks a player out as exceptional. By all accounts, 35 players in the league are now guaranteed that sum or more for the coming season, which starts in early October. Last season the number of contracts at $10m or above stood at exactly 20, a tier occupied almost entirely by players such as Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Auston Matthews.
The salary cap explains part of the jump. It stood at $88m two seasons ago, rose to $95.5m last season, now sits at $104m, and is due to reach $123m by 2028. Even allowing for that, the pace at which player salaries have grown appears to have outrun the cap increases themselves.
If the trend holds through the rest of the contract window, the $10m mark may stop functioning as a meaningful threshold altogether, with clubs instead judged on how many such deals they can carry within an ever-rising cap.
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