Connor McDavid and Evan Bouchard's next contracts should be more than manageable.

There's a dirty little secret about NHL salaries.

For all the consternation about paying upwards of $10 million per year and how hard it can be to ice a winning team around such a big contract, the truth is that the best players in the world are all underpaid.

According to The Athletic, Connor McDavid's market value is $16 million, good for $3.5 million in surplus value. Nathan MacKinnon, the highest-paid player in the league, still has a surplus value of $800,000. Leon Draisaitl's market value of $15.5 million is far above his current salary, and still higher than the $14 million he'll make next season.

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That puts teams like the Edmonton Oilers in an enviable position, where it's almost impossible to overpay their franchise-defining superstars. And with the salary cap going up -- $95.5 million next year, and up to $113.5 million by 2027-28, they'll have oodles of cap space to use on their stars and build around them.

It'll be put into practice soon enough. First on the docket will be extending pending RFA Evan Bouchard, who is due for a massive raise on his $3.9 million salary. 

By just about any measure, Bouchard is one of the best defencemen in the NHL, and at 25 he only figures to get better. The Athletic calculates his market value at $12.9 million this season, $1.4 million more than any defenceman makes per year. 

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I have a tough time seeing Bouchard's AAV exceeding $10 million thanks to his largely undeserved reputation as a turnover-prone defensive liability, which means the Oilers will almost certainly get a bargain on Bouchard's next contract. Thanks to the rising cap, that bargain will only get better as it takes up smaller and smaller percentages of the cap going forward. 

Even better, Bouchard's extension will come before Cale Makar resets the market with his new contract in 2027-28.

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As for McDavid, he'll be able to ask for the moon come July 1st, and he'll deserve it. Dom Luszczyszyn laid out for The Athletic how McDavid could become the NHL's first $20 million man and still be worth it. 

Even then, it's hard to see McDavid asking for -- much less getting -- a contract worth $6 million more annually than his friend and teammate Leon Draisaitl. McDavid will set a new AAV record, and maybe even smash it, but even at, say, $17.5 million he'd be a bargain and leave plenty of room for the Oilers to build around him.

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With just over $19 million in projected cap space next season, the Oilers will have ample room to extend Bouchard while filling out the rest of the roster. They'll have a whopping $66 million available when McDavid's next contract kicks in in 2026-27, and even if that new deal eats up a lot of that cap space that still leaves over $40 million to play with.

The NHL's financial landscape is about to change dramatically, and we don't yet know where it will lead. But with Draisaitl already locked up and McDavid and Bouchard set to sign more below-market deals, the Oilers should be in as good a position as anyone in the years to come.

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