Cap Comparables: How Matthews’ deal stacks up against previous record-setters

For at least another half-decade, the Toronto Maple Leafs faithful can shelve the nerves, the anxious scrolling and refreshing, the spiralling speculation. Auston Matthews, the blue and white’s talisman, he of franchise records and league-wide accolades, is sticking around.

The club and the man himself announced as much Wednesday, after GM Brad Treliving inked his star centreman to a four-year, $53-million extension that’ll make Matthews the highest-paid player in the league — in terms of cap hit, at least — when his new deal kicks in.

With a record $13.25-million cap hit taking effect in 2024-25, Matthews’ new pact will snag the crown from Colorado Avalanche pivot Nathan MacKinnon, who himself reset the cap-hit benchmark just last year when he signed his own extension. The 2022 Cup champ’s new deal came with a $12.6-million cap hit, just a hair above Connor McDavid’s previously league-leading $12.5-million cap hit.

That said, with the league’s salary cap rising year by year, by and large, getting a sense of how these landmark deals compare to each other means looking beyond the cap hit alone, and instead at the percentage of the cap that a player’s hit takes up. And while Matthews’ new cap hit ranks as the highest in league history, it isn’t the heftiest in terms of how much space it actually occupies on the Maple Leafs’ books. 

Matthews, McDavid and MacKinnon

The $13.25-million AAV attached to Matthews’ new deal is a barrier-breaker, but it still sits behind McDavid’s deal in terms of that percentage of the cap.

Back in 2017, when the Edmonton Oilers captain inked his extension, his $12.5-million cap hit accounted for a record 16.67 per cent of the cap, which sat at $75 million at the time. Of course, like Matthews, McDavid signed his deal with a year remaining on his previous contract. By the time the first year of that league-leading extension kicked in, the cap had risen to $79.5 million, meaning McDavid’s $12.5-million hit accounted for 15.72 per cent of the cap once it was actually on the Oilers’ books.

While MacKinnon’s extension unseated McDavid in terms of cap hit alone, the Colorado centreman’s $12.6-million hit accounted for 15.27 per cent of the cap when he signed his deal in 2022. That deal doesn’t actually begin until next season — with the cap rising to $83.5 million for the coming campaign, the first year of MacKinnon’s new deal will actually take up 15.09 per cent of Colorado’s cap, still less than the first year of McDavid’s deal.

Where does that leave Matthews?

If the Maple Leafs centreman’s $13.25-million cap hit kicked in this season, it would take up 15.87 per cent of the cap given this season’s $83.5-million upper limit — even more than the first year of McDavid’s banner deal. But the crucial point for Matthews, Treliving and the Maple Leafs is where the cap seems on track to go. 

According to the estimates given to NHL clubs by the league last year, the NHL’s salary cap is set for a sharp uptick after next season — the league’s projection has the 2024-25 upper limit at $87.5 million, which would be a 4.79-per cent jump from the current level, the biggest in six years. If that estimate holds true, by the time Matthews’ new league-leading cap hit is actually on the Maple Leafs’ books, it would account for 15.14 per cent of Toronto’s cap — more than the first year of MacKinnon’s deal, but still behind the first year of McDavid’s. 

The league’s projection left room for an even higher upper limit, though, their estimate for 2024-25 landing between $87.5 – $88 million. If the upper limit actually lands closer to the higher end of that projection, Matthews’ first year would account for just 15.06 per cent of the Maple Leafs’ cap that season, less than the first years of both McDavid and MacKinnon’s similar deals.

As Sportsnet’s Rory Boylen pointed out last year when he broke down where Matthews’ deal might land, one key question was whether the Maple Leafs pivot and his representatives would push even harder in terms of that cap percentage. Had Matthews aimed to match McDavid’s 16.67-per cent benchmark, for example, working with the cap’s current upper limit, his cap hit could’ve landed just south of $14 million. 

The Pittsburgh Pair

In terms of active contracts for the first year of Matthews’ new deal, 2024-25, no other players aside from the above trio will have inked deals with cap hits taking up more than 15 per cent of the cap at the time of their signing.

The next closest are Sidney Crosby and his new teammate Erik Karlsson, whose deals both accounted for 14.5 per cent of the cap’s upper limit when they each signed.

While Crosby’s $8.7-million cap hit sits far below the double-digit barrier-breakers from McDavid, MacKinnon and Matthews, when No. 87 signed his 12-year deal back in 2012, the cap’s upper limit was just $60 million, meaning his signature hit would’ve eaten up a fairly similar amount of the Pens’ cap. Of course, by the time the deal actually kicked in a season later, the cap had risen sharply, by 7.17 per cent, to $64.3 million, meaning the first year of Crosby’s contract ended up accounting for just 13.5 per cent of the cap.

Karlsson’s $11.5-million cap hit similarly looked set to eat up 14.5 per cent of the cap when he signed his own extension, back in 2019. It wound up taking up slightly less space, as in the first season of that deal the cap rose to $81.5 million. It remained there for three years straight, during which time Karlsson’s hit accounted for 14.1 per cent of the cap.

As an illustration of how the rising cap can change the value of deals like these, Crosby’s $8.7-million hit now accounts for just 10.42 per cent of the Pens’ cap, given how much the league’s upper limit has risen. Karlsson’s situation is complicated by retained salary, but his full $11.5-million hit would account for 13.77 per cent of the cap this season.

Four-year Gamble

While there are a few deals that seem to compare to Matthews’ new pact in a single-season vacuum, in another sense, there is no true comparable for No. 34’s contract.

MacKinnon and McDavid signed on for similar record-setting cap hits when they inked their deals, and the previously-mentioned pair of Penguins took up a similar percentage of their club’s cap space when they signed their extensions — but all four of those players signed for maximum term. Eight years in MacKinnon, McDavid and Karlsson’s case, 12 in Crosby’s.

Matthews’ deal grants him that weighty cap hit but keeps him in blue and white for just four years after his current deal expires. 

Even CapFriendly’s comparables engine was flummoxed by the move, linking the deal to MacKinnon’s and a few others that similarly came with an eight-year term.

 

According to Sportsnet’s Luke Fox, such a deal was never on the table for the Maple Leafs and Matthews, the centreman’s camp and Treliving discussing only three-, four-, or five-year options.

For Matthews, the decision to hit the market again five years from now is obviously a savvy one, setting No. 34 up for another significant payday before he reaches the twilight of his career. Less so for the Maple Leafs, who will roll the dice on negotiating with Matthews after potentially another half-decade of franchise records and trophy hauls, and with the cap in an entirely different place.

But plenty figures to happen before then. Much like MacKinnon’s landmark moment, while Matthews has reset the cap-hit benchmark, there’s no telling how long it will last. 

Hart Trophy and Art Ross winner Leon Draisaitl will be owed a new deal two seasons from now. The league’s projections put the salary cap over $90 million by the time we get to what would be the first year of Draisaitl’s new deal. A season after that, it’ll be McDavid’s turn to reset the market again, and a couple years after that, Matthews will be up once more.

For now, the Maple Leafs have another half-decade of No. 34 in blue and white — five more years, at least, to watch the franchise phenom do his thing at Scotiabank Arena, five more chances to try to make good on their city’s championship dreams.