Connor McDavid shocked the NHL by signing a two-year extension with the Edmonton Oilers for what is universally perceived to be a massive discount in pay. The star forward signed for an average of $12.5 million per year, the same average annual value as the eight-year contract he is finishing at the end of the 2025-26 season.
Auston Matthews, who knows McDavid well, has reacted to the star player’s extension.
“I think for him, it's all about winning and setting himself up for the best opportunity to do that,” Matthews said on Tuesday. “I'm not in those conversations or anything. Obviously, I have a lot of respect for him, and I've been fortunate to get to know him over the years. I know that my time around him, that’s the main thing that he obviously wants to do. That's what everybody wants to do is to win, and he's as committed as anybody to it.”
The Oilers have been to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals, and McDavid, arguably the best player in the NHL, accepted a salary that is $4.5 million less than what Kirill Kaprizov signed with the Minnesota Wild last week.
In negotiating his own extension with the Maple Leafs in the summer of 2023, Matthews was in a similar predicament to McDavid. It was in the middle of August when Matthews signed a four-year, $53 million extension. The $13.25 million average salary did make the player the highest paid, but only marginally, and it represented a modest raise from the $11,640,250 in average annual value he had earned on his previous deal.
Matthews reflected on his philosophy on how every player negotiates.
“I think everybody's situation is different, obviously. Every team's situation is different. With the cap going up, it's tough to kind of envision what the landscape is going to look like,” Matthews said. “But in the end, I think you always want to try to find a happy medium between what helps the team and puts the team in a good situation as well as yourself. So I think that's kind of the way I tend to look toward it.”
It's hard to argue Matthews didn't put the club in a good spot with the deal he signed. The term was fair, the increase was modest, and the Leafs are set up better cap-wise than they have been in quite some time.
By the time Matthews does become a free agent, the salary cap could be as high as $125,000,000. That would certainly make things interesting for not only No. 34, but McDavid, who would also become a free agent at the same time.
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