The NHL contract debate keeps getting dragged back to the same place: the sticker price. Brett Kulak’s five-year, $4.5 million AAV deal has already been labeled by a couple of different NHL news outlets as the league’s “worst contract,” and plenty of fans have fixated on the term as the problem.
But that misses the bigger story. In today’s NHL, the cap is climbing so fast that contract analysis has to start looking very different than it did even a few years ago.
The league’s hard cap sat at $39 million in 2005-06. Two decades later, it has reached $95.5 million, a 145% jump with a compounding annual growth rate of about 4.6% from 2005-06 to 2025-26.
And the next stretch is projected to move even faster. From $95.5 million to a projected $113.5 million in 2027-28 would be the largest absolute increase in NHL salary-cap history, with a CAGR of roughly 9.02%.
That matters because the NHL is now seeing cap growth at a pace that rivals the biggest leagues in North America. Over the same time frame, the NFL and NBA have posted CAGRs of 8% and 8.3%, respectively. The raw numbers in those leagues are much larger, but the NHL’s recent growth is no longer something to shrug off.
That changing reality reshapes how teams and players approach deals.
Players have more reason than ever to prefer shorter contracts, since a return to free agency can mean re-entering the market at a much higher cap. Jason Robertson’s one-year deal in Dallas fits that logic.
Teams, meanwhile, are often willing to pay a little more now if it means locking in a player before the cap rises again. That’s the idea behind the Bowen Byram deal.
There’s also a third route: keep the AAV steady, extend the term, and let the cap inflation do the work over time. That’s the framework the Kulak contract falls into.
The same lens changes how a deal like Leo Carlsson’s looks. Maybe it feels rich in the present, but the math shifts quickly.
Assuming a 6% CAGR, Carlsson would account for about as much of the cap in the final two years of his contract as Leon Draisaitl does right now, roughly 13%, except Carlsson would be 25 and 26 years old, not 30. Since two teams were willing to make him the centerpiece, the comparison is fair.
It’s not an overpay.
Bo Byram’s contract follows the same logic. It will already sit below 11% of the cap next season, and by the final two years of the deal it would dip under 9%.
For context, Evan Bouchard, Thomas Harley, Drew Doughty, and Rasmus Dahlin are all around 10% of the cap right now. Byram is in his prime, and he has half as many Stanley Cup rings as all four of those defenders combined.
That doesn’t look like an overpay.
And then there’s Kulak. By years four and five, the Avalanche will likely view him as a stay-at-home 6 or 7D.
At that point, he would be taking up less than 3.5% of the cap, which is about the same percentage Brayden McNabb is carrying right now. For a veteran shutdown defender, that’s a perfectly reasonable number.
It’s not an overstay or an overpay.
The point is simple: contract value in the NHL can’t be judged only by the AAV on day one. The cap is rising too quickly for that. Long-term cap percentage, not just upfront cost, has to be part of the conversation now.
And if a team is willing to hand out max-term money these days, that says something too. It’s not just the player betting on himself by taking a short deal anymore. It’s also a bet on the NHL salary cap continuing the biggest compounding run it has ever seen.
In Other News...
Avalanche Lineup Idea Could Change Everything Up Front
As the Avalanche keep sorting through ways to reshape their forward group, one of the more interesting ideas floating around is a lineup that would push Nazem Kadri to the wing and let Nic Roy handle third-line center duties. It is the kind of tweak that would change the look of Colorados depth chart in a hurry, especially if the top six is reworked around a player who has spent so much of his career driving play down the middle.
There is also a broader league backdrop to the conversation, with Ryan Reaves still on the market and hoping to keep his career going before training camp. Elsewhere, Andrew Agozzino has moved from playing into coaching, a reminder of how quickly roster conversations can turn into bigger career crossroads across the NHL, even as Colorado keeps weighing what the right mix up front might look like. [Read more 🡒]
Avalanche Still Havent Solved Their Biggest Nazem Kadri Question
Nazem Kadris place in the Avalanche lineup is one of the more important roster puzzles hanging over the 2026-27 season, because his value is tied so closely to how the coaching staff chooses to use him. The discussion starts with the basics of deployment, but it quickly turns into a bigger question about what kind of line the Avalanche want to build around him and how much stability they can finally give him after a year of constant shuffling.
Kadris usage last season and into the playoffs only sharpened the debate, since his minutes were split in ways that made it hard to lock down a clean read on what worked best. Colorado got different results depending on where he lined up, and the next step is figuring out whether his most effective role comes with a fixed center assignment or a move that lets the Avalanche better settle the rest of their forward group. [Read more 🡒]
Former Avalanche First-Round Pick Is Still Trying To Prove Colorado Wrong
Cal Ritchies path since being taken 27th overall by the Avalanche in the 2023 NHL Draft has already taken a few turns, and Colorado has had a front-row seat for all of them. He got his first NHL look with the Avalanche, then went back to the OHL, and eventually found himself in a new organization trying to carve out a longer-term role at the sports highest level.
Ritchies latest stretch with the Islanders showed why there is still plenty of belief in his upside, even if the road has not been linear. After opening the year in the AHL with Bridgeport, he earned a recall and finished with 30 points in 65 NHL games, a reminder that he is still learning how to translate his game against top competition while spending the offseason working on his strength, skating and shot. [Read more 🡒]