EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers will have Connor McDavid in their lineup for the entirety of his prime, until age 29 at least, and they’ll pay him $100 million for that right.
What a problem to have.
Amid all the online hysteria of how the Edmonton Oilers would afford both McDavid and his No. 2, the yet-to-be-signed Leon Draisaitl, the numbers on McDavid’s contract extension came in a tad lower than expected, announced on Wednesday as such:
A nice, round U.S. $100 million over the maximum eight-year term that makes for an annual average value of $12.5 million, down from a reported $13.25 million that is said to be an accurate depiction of where negotiations were on the day it was reported.
“I can assure you,” said Oilers general manage Peter Chiarelli. “It easily could have been a lot higher in value, and shorter in term.
“Connor was emphatic, as was I, about keeping the team competitive.”
As for McDavid, he will celebrate his 21st birthday this coming Jan. 13, and on July 1, 2018, begin to cash in on the richest contract (per season) in NHL history.
“It’s insane to really think about,” McDavid said. “To think that someone is going to pay me $100 million to do what I would do anyway on a regular day. It’s insane.”
Although exact terms were not made available, it’s a front-end loaded contract, with $86 million paid out in signing bonuses.
What does that mean? Well, averaged out over the term of the contract — if every year paid the same, which it does not — McDavid would receive $10.75 million every July 1, and the other $1.75 million in regular pay instalments over the course of each season.
Accompanying that largesse, of course, will be the pressure of bringing a Stanley Cup to Edmonton.
“For sure there is [pressure], but for me, it just makes me want to get better, work harder,” said McDavid, his parents on hand for the announcement. “You want to earn that money. You don’t want to be someone who signs a deal and kind of shuts it down. That’s not going to be me at all. It’s only driving me more.”
The only way to evaluate these contracts historically is as a percentage of the team’s cap space. At $12.5 million, McDavid usurps 16.7 per cent of the $75-million cap in place for the 2017-18 season. (Of course, the contract does not kick in until the start of the 2018-19 season, so if the cap goes up before July of 2018, the percentage or McDavid’s take will decrease accordingly.)
“Sidney’s second deal, a five-year deal, was [a higher] percentage of the cap,” McDavid’s agent, Jeff Jackson, said of Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Some numbers: Alex Ovechkin’s extension ate up 19 per cent of Washington’s cap when he signed it, while Crosby’s second contract was 17.3 per cent and teammate Evgeni Malkin’s was 15.3 per cent. McDavid’s deal will open at over 16 per cent and presumably fall from there, if the cap continues to rise.
“It was a very different negotiation, more about how the team was going to evolve, where Connor would fit. It was a very interesting process, probably unlike every other,” Jackson said. “It was a very logical discussion that I had with Peter, over several months.”
Now that this deal is complete, the focus turns to Draisaitl, who had 77 points to McDavid’s 100 last season. Is it as easy as saying that 77 per cent of $12.5 million is $9.625 million?
Not for the Oilers, it’s not.
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“There have been two other players (Crosby and Wayne Gretzky) who have done what Connor has done at his age,” said Chiarelli, referring to McDavid’s recent haul at the NHL Awards. “He’s a unique player, but he also cares about his teammates, and he expressed that very directly. He wants us to ice a wining team, as we all do.”
Chiarelli will argue that McDavid took less than he could have, which is indisputable, and Draisaitl should do likewise. Mike Liut, Draisaitl’s agent, will argue that his player deserves three-quarters of McDavid’s pay, and so it will go until a number gets agreed upon.
For the Oilers, however, locking up the next greatest player in the game for the next nine seasons means that other players — like Draisiatl — might just take a little less to be an Oiler.
They’ve come a long, long way since Edmonton was a fixture on every player’s no-trade list.
“People should want to come play here,” McDavid said. “We showed last year what we’re capable of, and we’re only going to get better.”
