This in from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, his speculation that in a much freer market situation the Edmonton Oilers would be happy to pay Connor McDavid $50 million per year. Read More
This in from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, his speculation that in a much freer market situation the Edmonton Oilers would be happy to pay Connor McDavid $50 million per year. Talking about the overall trend in player negotiations this off-season, Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts podcast: “I think a lot of players expect that the
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This in from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, his speculation that in a much freer market situation the Edmonton Oilers would be happy to pay Connor McDavid $50 million per year.
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Talking about the overall trend in player negotiations this off-season, Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts podcast: “I think a lot of players expect that the two highest salaries after this wave of signings are going to be McDavid and (the Wild’s Kirill) Kaprizov. And look, I don’t think anyone’s going to have issue. If the Oilers could pay McDavid $50 million, he would deserve $50 million.”
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Friedman continued: “And Kaprizov is a great player in a great spot to hit it big. So once those players sign, I think you’ll see some of those other potential top UFAs next year say, okay, now the top, top, top of the market has been set. It’s easier for me to find the sweet spot or the comfortable place with the team to go after those two guys are done.”
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My take
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1. I’ve often wondered what McDavid might be paid if there were no salary cap and he was an unrestricted free agent. The most he can get in a salary capped NHL is 20 per cent of Edmonton’s salary cap allotment, which would mean $19.1 million on a new deal.
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Of course, McDavid is worth that much and far more.
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But of course, if McDavid signed for as much as $19.1 million per year under the current salary cap system it would mean less cap space to sign other top players and less chance of winning a Stanley Cup.
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The cap system presents a brutal conundrum to the very top players in this manner.
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2. But back to Friedman’s speculation. I wondered about a way to test his idea, and came up with this quick back-of-the envelope survey, to look at what the three other top players in the top North American leagues in basketball, football and baseball made in 2025, then compare that to the revenue brought in by their team.
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When we do that we see that of all these great players McDavid — due to the hard cap model of the NHL’s collective agreement — earned by far the least percentage of his team’s 2024 revenues. He made $12.5 million, which is 3.2 per cent of Edmonton’s $388 million estimated revenue in 2023-24, as reported by Forbes magazine (the source of all the dollar figures here).
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But what if McDavid took home the same percentage as Dallas Cowboy star Dak Prescott, the highest paid pro football player in America? Prescott makes $127 million, which is 10.6 per cent of the $1.2 billion in revenues made by the Cowboys.