{"id":44388,"date":"2025-08-04T10:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T10:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/44388\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T10:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T10:50:09","slug":"mcdavids-real-value-is-50-million-per-year-nhl-insider-speculates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/44388\/","title":{"rendered":"McDavid’s real value is $50 million per year, NHL insider speculates"},"content":{"rendered":"

This in from Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman, his speculation that in a much freer market situation the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> would be happy to pay Connor McDavid<\/a> $50 million per year.<\/p>\n

Talking about the overall trend in player negotiations this off-season, Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts podcast: \u201cI think a lot of players expect that the two highest salaries after this wave of signings are going to be McDavid and (the Wild\u2019s Kirill) Kaprizov. And look, I don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s going to have issue. If the Oilers could pay McDavid $50 million, he would deserve $50 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman continued: \u201cAnd Kaprizov is a great player in a great spot to hit it big. So once those players sign, I think you\u2019ll see some of those other potential top UFAs next year say, okay, now the top, top, top of the market has been set. It\u2019s easier for me to find the sweet spot or the comfortable place with the team to go after those two guys are done.\u201d<\/p>\n

My take<\/p>\n

1. I\u2019ve often wondered what McDavid might be paid if there were no salary cap and he was an unrestricted free agent. The most he can get in a salary capped NHL is 20 per cent of Edmonton\u2019s salary cap allotment, which would mean $19.1 million on a new deal.<\/p>\n

Of course, McDavid is worth that much and far more.<\/p>\n

But of course, if McDavid signed for as much as $19.1 million per year under the current salary cap system it would mean less cap space to sign other top players and less chance of winning a Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n

The cap system presents a brutal conundrum to the very top players in this manner.<\/p>\n

2. But back to Friedman\u2019s speculation. I wondered about a way to test his idea, and came up with this quick back-of-the envelope survey, to look at what the three other top players in the top North American leagues in basketball, football and baseball made in 2025, then compare that to the revenue brought in by their team.<\/p>\n

When we do that we see that of all these great players McDavid \u2014 due to the hard cap model of the NHL\u2019s collective agreement \u2014 earned by far the least percentage of his team\u2019s 2024 revenues. He made $12.5 million, which is 3.2 per cent of Edmonton\u2019s $388 million estimated revenue in 2023-24, as reported by Forbes magazine (the source of all the dollar figures here).<\/p>\n

But what if McDavid took home the same percentage as Dallas Cowboy star Dak Prescott, the highest paid pro football player in America? Prescott makes $127 million, which is 10.6 per cent of the $1.2 billion in revenues made by the Cowboys.<\/p>\n

If McDavid took 10.6 per cent of Edmonton\u2019s revenue he\u2019d make $41 million.<\/p>\n

If he took the seven per cent of revenue that the NBA\u2019s top paid player Stephon Curry made, he\u2019d make $27 million.<\/p>\n

But if he took the 24.6 per cent that baseball\u2019s top paid player Juan Soto earned of New York Mets\u2019 revenues, McDavid would make $95 million.<\/p>\n

The average salary of those three percentages for Prescott, Curry and Soto is 14.04 per cent, meaning McDavid would make $47.5 million.<\/p>\n

\"chart\"<\/a><\/p>\n

chart<\/p>\n

It turns out Friedman\u2019s estimate of $50 million per season is not a bad guess at what the Oilers could and likely would pay McDavid in a more open NHL market, at least if you go by my reasoning and comparisons here.<\/p>\n

Perhaps there\u2019s a better way to come up with a sharper estimate, but $50 million a year sounds about right for McDavid\u2019s salary if there was a much softer cap situation in the NHL.<\/p>\n

At the Cult of Hockey<\/p>\n

\u2018They probably should have been signed\u2019: Have Oilers recovered from August \u201924 disaster?<\/a><\/p>\n

Oilers eyeing 8-year deal for another d-man, insider speculates. Good idea?<\/a><\/p>\n

That one player (other than McDavid) the Oilers would be wise to lock up pronto?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This in from Sportsnet\u2019s Elliotte Friedman, his speculation that in a much freer market situation the Edmonton Oilers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,12428,1762,453,30439,1509,475,448,82,31382],"class_list":["post-44388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-connor-mcdavid","tag-dak-prescott","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-elliotte-friedman","tag-juan-soto","tag-new-york-mets","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-top-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}