The Connor McDavid contract watch just got a whole lot louder, and the latest numbers floating around are the kind that bend the NHL market out of shape.
On a recent Spittin’ Chiclets episode, Ryan Whitney and Paul Bissonnette tried to put a price tag on McDavid’s next deal, and they didn’t exactly play it safe. Whitney said McDavid “realistically should be getting $23 million a year.”
Bissonnette pushed it even higher, tossing out eight years at $25 million per season and calling it a deal that would make McDavid the first player in NHL history to sign a $200 million contract. “I think he’s gonna get it,” Bissonnette said.
That conversation comes at a time when the league’s salary landscape is already being pushed upward. The Leo Carlsson offer sheet saga didn’t just force Anaheim into an expensive match - it also seemed to reset the market, with Carlsson now locked in at an $18 million AAV.
That, in turn, helped shape the deal Connor Bedard signed on Saturday, a five-year contract worth $15 million per season. And with the salary cap projected to keep climbing, the ceiling for the league’s biggest stars keeps moving with it.
There is one major catch, though. The new CBA that took effect in September wiped out eight-year contracts entirely.
Teams can now offer a maximum of seven years, so an eight-year, $200 million McDavid deal isn’t actually possible under the current rules. Even so, a seven-year contract at $23 million or $25 million per year would still stand alone as the richest deal in NHL history by a huge margin.
The timing adds another layer to the whole thing. McDavid is just entering Year 1 of the two-year, $25 million extension he signed with Edmonton last October.
That short-term bridge currently leaves him as the seventh-highest-paid player in the league. At the time, the deal was widely seen as McDavid choosing urgency over a long-term payday, keeping his focus on winning now.
It also points directly to his next negotiation window, which arrives on July 1, 2027, just as the cap is expected to keep rising and other stars keep resetting the market.
The logic behind a monster McDavid number is pretty simple. If Carlsson, a 20-year-old who still hasn’t played a full NHL season, can land $18 million, then the best player alive commanding a historic premium doesn’t sound far-fetched at all.
Nothing is official yet, and McDavid still isn’t extension-eligible for another year. But if the Spittin’ Chiclets crew is anywhere close, Edmonton may not just be trying to keep its captain. It may be preparing to make him the first $200 million player in league history, even if the new rules won’t let the term stretch that far.
There’s also the Evan Bouchard piece of the puzzle. The Oilers defenseman is on a four-year deal worth $10.5 million per season that runs through 2029. What that number looks like by then is anybody’s guess, and the conversation around him is already drifting into territory where he could be a $20 million player too.
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