broke Tuesday morning<\/a> \u2014 to gauge what they think of the contract and how they see it affecting their clients down the road.<\/p>\nKaprizov established new highs for both total value of an NHL contract and yearly compensation, and he secured 17.8 percent of the cap \u2014 closer to the maximum allowable 20 percent than other superstars have negotiated for in recent years.<\/p>\n
Of course, he did so in a rapidly evolving environment where the NHL and NHL Players\u2019 Association have already projected payroll ranges out for three seasons to increase \u201cpredictability on core salary cap economics.\u201d By announcing that the current $95.5 million cap ceiling will jump to at least $104 million next season and $113.5 million in 2026-27, the league has essentially armed top players with even more ammunition to push for the highest AAVs possible on long-term deals in order to guarantee that their contracts age well.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, let\u2019s turn things over to the perspective of player agents, none of whom were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the Kaprizov negotiations.<\/p>\n
The contract<\/p>\n
In order to get the Kaprizov extension across the finish line, the Wild had to ante up a second time after having the player\u2019s camp turn down an eight-year, $128 million offer ($16 million AAV) last month.<\/p>\n
By doing so, they made good on a public promise from Wild owner Craig Leipold, who vowed that no team would offer Kaprizov more money than he could get in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Did they essentially outbid the rest of the market to retain their own player?<\/p>\n
Agent 1: \u201cEvery deal is unique. What\u2019s unique about this is that it\u2019s obviously a team that doesn\u2019t have the same ability to sign players in the market, so keeping their own players is a very high priority to them, right? There are certain teams that can go into the UFA market and sign players, and they\u2019re not really one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 2: \u201cI think this is the first manifestation of the concreteness of the growing salary cap. \u2026 We\u2019re going to see a whole series of deals that are going to push things even further. It\u2019s going to drag up the highest-paid bracket that\u2019s historically been in that $9 million to $12 million range. I think those elite players are going to now get into the $12 million-plus range, depending on which franchise it is. To me, this was a bit of a perfect storm of a team that really needed to sign the player and were going to pay at all costs to stay in their competitive window as opposed to losing a player of this ilk and going into some kind of retool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 3: \u201cSometimes it\u2019s just luck and circumstance. Kaprizov had all of the right leverage \u2014 a rising cap, a team that had a bunch of guys already signed. The other reality is the cap\u2019s set too low this year. I think you\u2019re going to find that the cap is not just going to be at $104 (million) next year and I think that $113.5 (million in 2026-27) is going to end up being like $120 (million). So the cap is going to go much higher, and sometimes it\u2019s timing and situation, and I think that\u2019s what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 4: \u201cThat\u2019s a significant payment. Now you\u2019re thinking, \u2018Are these guys the basketball players and the football players now?\u2019 We\u2019re not at that stage yet because we don\u2019t have the TV revenue to compete with, but $17 million is a significant number.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impact on potential UFAs<\/p>\n
Kaprizov\u2019s massive deal comes at a time when a number of other high-profile forwards are involved in negotiations with the possibility of unrestricted free agency looming in summer 2026.<\/p>\n
That includes Jack Eichel of the Vegas Golden Knights, Kyle Connor of the Winnipeg Jets, Adrian Kempe of the Los Angeles Kings and Martin Necas of the Colorado Avalanche, among others.<\/p>\n
(For the purposes of this conversation, we\u2019ll leave Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid aside, given the unique nature of his situation).<\/p>\n
Will this deal set any new precedents that impact those negotiations?<\/p>\n
Agent 5: \u201cWhile the circumstances surrounding Kaprizov\u2019s contract negotiations were somewhat unique, the fact remains that the $17 million number is now in the marketplace and can\u2019t be ignored. Going forward, it will unquestionably have a gravitational effect for star-level players.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 6: \u201cIt\u2019s a noteworthy contract. It cannot be ignored by either side in negotiations. For all these players, we\u2019ll see how it plays out, but I believe the players that are still unsigned really have no pressure on them to get anything finalized at this point. The pressure builds on the teams. It\u2019s not on the player in these situations, particularly when all of these players have already made significant amounts of money in their careers. The pressure just continues to move toward the teams every day that these players aren\u2019t signed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 2: \u201cThis is going to dramatically impact how higher-end players get paid going forward. I still believe we can see some of the top players do shorter-term contracts that will be inflated over what shorter-term contracts have been before. This will have a dramatic impact on how the best players get paid. Because it\u2019s been trending this way, but this is really the first true example, in my view, of the impact of knowing what the salary cap will be for the next several years \u2014 which is growth like we haven\u2019t seen before consistently in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 3: \u201cThe toughest part about this contract is what might have been for the players who signed just before it. If you look at guys like (Mitch) Marner and (Mikko) Rantanen, they obviously wanted to go to specific places, but if they would have gone anywhere or they would have waited or even signed a one-year deal, they could have gotten a lot more. Those are the deals that are the outliers. That\u2019s almost $40 million total less (than Kaprizov), regardless of Vegas or Dallas having tax advantages.\u201d<\/p>\n
What comes next<\/p>\n
After years of being mired in a flat-cap environment that yielded only incremental gains for the NHL\u2019s top players, we\u2019re clearly moving into a realm where the biggest difference-makers can command big raises.<\/p>\n
What does the Kaprizov deal tell us about the years ahead?<\/p>\n
Agent 3: \u201cGenerally, in our system, the more years you give to a team, the more cap hit you get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 2: \u201cI think we\u2019re going to see more and more unutilized cap space moving forward. I think the percentage of cap space used up historically is going to go down as the cap continues to go up because I think there\u2019s going to be a whole group of teams that are currently at or near the cap that won\u2019t be able to do business or sustain continuing to be at that level in the next three to four years \u2014 which is why there\u2019s going to be a higher distribution of the additional cap space to the top players than we\u2019ve seen historically.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe salary-arbitration mechanism is going to keep the middle class healthy, but I think the group that\u2019s going to get impacted with his redistribution of a team\u2019s cap space is probably that lower-middle class \u2014 that group of players that historically have been in the $2.5 million-plus range, that kind of third-line player or fifth\/sixth defenseman. Some of those players who have historically done pretty well, they\u2019re the ones I feel like will get squeezed as we move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my concerns with the whole system is that we could end up getting into a situation where there\u2019s less parity than what we\u2019ve experienced in the past several years. Which was one of the goals of the salary cap from the league. Which is an important part of why the league has had success and has grown. I do worry about getting back to haves and have-nots that we had pre-cap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 4: \u201cI think it\u2019s great any time you see increased contracts. It\u2019s always a positive sign. There\u2019s more money in the marketplace, the cap\u2019s going up, the teams are willing to spend more money on the star players \u2014 that\u2019s great. But there is a caution here because I think it can divide the upper class and the lower class. The upper class is always going to get paid, but I think it still squeezes out mid-market (teams), and teams are still going to look to pay guys the minimum. So down the road, it may be an upper-class and a lower-class league.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 2: \u201cThe last point I would make is that there\u2019s so many significant players that are going to be up doing new contracts in the next few years, that I can\u2019t see how this push doesn\u2019t sustain itself with obviously Connor McDavid, Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar \u2014 some of the best players in the game at their positions are coming up in the next two seasons, and this in my view will manifest itself to solidify this contract as the new norm for elite players.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agent 7: \u201cTo quote the late Bob Goodenow: \u2018A rising tide raises all ships.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Michael Reaves \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kirill Kaprizov didn\u2019t just reset the NHL marketplace by securing a record-shattering extension from the Minnesota Wild. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,7522,3275,7526,7524,575,85,7529,6000],"class_list":["post-180862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-los-angeles-kings","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-vegas-golden-knights","tag-winnipeg-jets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}