Edmonton Oilers are following the Maple Leafs’ restrictive salary cap blueprint. But there is one key difference
Newly inserted Edmonton Oilers general manager Stan Bowman is in the midst of dealing with one of the grimmest realities of NHL team building: As your roster gets more experienced, it gets more expensive.
Which means that every season you don’t win the Stanley Cup — and the Oilers came within a game of doing just that back in June — is a season that might well have been your best chance at doing so.
Certainly that’s the least flattering implication of the contract extension for Leon Draisaitl announced this week. For all the talk about the deal being a signal of Connor McDavid’s long-term acquiescence to life in North America’s northernmost metropolis, given the well-documented friendship between the two stars, Draisaitl’s eight-year deal valued at $112 million (U.S.) means his cap hit of $14 million will supplant Toronto captain Auston Matthews as the NHL’s largest next season.
Considering Edmonton’s top defenceman Evan Bouchard is a restricted free agent also in need of a contract extension — and that McDavid will be eligible for another league-topping contract extension next summer — it’s an understatement to say the math only gets trickier from here.
In other words: Hello, Edmonton. Welcome to life as the Toronto Maple Leafs.
One of the easiest explanations for why Leafland’s current era has been such an unfailing disappointment, of course, is a top-heavy salary-cap structure that makes it difficult to credibly round out a roster. This coming season, for instance, Toronto’s four highest-paid players figure to earn an estimated 53 per cent of the salary cap. That’s up from a slightly less crippling 48 per cent last season, when the Leafs were typically short on depth. For now, at least, the Oilers aren’t the Leafs. This season, the last year that Draisaitl will command of a bargain cap hit of $8.5 million, the Oilers’ top four highest earners will take up a comparatively modest 41 per cent of the salary cap. And while the Leafs’ famed Core Four are all forwards, at least Edmonton’s top four earners includes two forwards, McDavid and Draisaitl, and two defencemen, Darnell Nurse and Mattias Ekholm.
Nurse’s $9.25-million hit is already the obvious albatross with no easy outlet, to be sure. But even bigger problems are coming.
This is where it gets difficult for executives. NHL orthodoxy gives a team in this position precisely two options: Pay the freight or get even worse. Never mind that paying the freight means that building a winner gets even more difficult.
The good thing for Bowman is this: His top-paid guys aren’t yet Stanley Cup champions, sure. But they have a history of delivering in games that matter.
