The two-year extension signed by Connor McDavid in Edmonton served only as confirmation to what has been rumored by NHL insiders all summer and what most observers expected after the superstar’s comments at the start of training camp last month. The deal is for the same $12.5 million cap hit he signed for in 2017 and extends his stay in Alberta until the summer of 2028.
The deal signed by McDavid is a clear signal that he has cut the Oilers a break by taking the same salary when he rightly could of demanded more than Kirill Kaprizov’s $17 million AAV, but his goal is to win a Cup in Edmonton and taking the same salary allows GM Stan Bowman to fill out their roster and increase the Oilers chances of success.
What the deal also signals is that after giving Edmonton the first 10 years of a Hall-of-Fame career and taking them to consecutive Stanley Cup Finals, he is giving them three more years of his service and then his obligation to the Oilers is complete. McDavid will be 31 in the summer of 2028 and will be able to re-sign with Edmonton on a seven-year max deal or elsewhere for six years, when he can likely get the 20% max salary he deserves.
Ironically, the contract of another famous client of agent Judd Moldaver, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews, is up in the summer of 2028. While speculating three years out is pretty pointless, the recent restructuring of the Leafs salary structure (not re-signing Mitch Marner, and the cap-friendly re-signings of John Tavares, Jake McCabe, etc) has the Leafs in a much more favorable position to be a big free agent player next season and in the years to follow.
Not to say that there would be coordination between Matthews and McDavid to play in the same place, and also not to say that would be Toronto. It could be Los Angeles or Arizona if it is back in the league. There is no way to know, but there is precedence to something like that happening; see Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya in Colorado, and more recently Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in Minnesota.
McDavid will be concentrating on winning a Cup in Edmonton and winning Olympic gold for Team Canada in Milano-Cortina next February, just as Matthews will be focusing on winning a Cup with the Leafs and the top prize for Team USA, but it is not out of realm of possibility that three years down the road they find themselves in the same place, trying to accomplish something that they separately could not accomplish.
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