Cole Perfetti has experienced miraculous playoff highs and ankle-twisting lows since his last contract negotiation.<\/p>\n
The goal he scored in Game 7 against St. Louis set a new record as the latest Game 7 tying goal in NHL history. Then Nikolaj Ehlers\u2019 departure opened up a job on the Jets\u2019 top power play, allowing Perfetti to feast on a unit that led the NHL in efficiency one year ago. If anyone was going to have a breakout season, it was him, fresh off 50 points and starting the season with newfound playoff confidence.<\/p>\n
Then a high ankle sprain took him out of the lineup. He scored just five points in his first 24 games to start the season and didn\u2019t look like the same clever, incisive player that had produced in a secondary scoring role the previous year. As his ankle healed and his confidence in it grew, Perfetti\u2019s scoring returned: he produced at a 50 points per 82 games rate from Jan. 1 through the end of the season. Add it all up, though, with the games missed due to injury, and Perfetti scored just 32 points in 68 games.<\/p>\n
Now the two-year, $3.25 million AAV bridge deal Perfetti signed in 2024 has come to an end \u2014 not with a massive breakout season but with a late return to form. He\u2019s 24 years old, continues to show poise with the puck, good hands, and great vision, but his poor counting stats from last season will hurt him.<\/p>\n
Perfetti has more leverage this summer than he did two years ago. He\u2019s a restricted free agent with arbitration rights and his first crack at UFA status could come as soon as 2027. If he wanted to play hardball, he\u2019d simply file for arbitration and then wait for the hearing. It would guarantee him a one-year contract, putting the Jets under pressure next summer, with him just one year away from UFA status. This is similar to the strategies employed by former Jets like Andrew Copp and Jacob Trouba, which each resulted in trades.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to come to that. I project that the Jets will get Perfetti signed to a long-term contract, and it might age as a bargain, given Perfetti\u2019s injury-impacted year and the series of cap increases projected in the years to come. But what will it cost the Jets?<\/p>\n
Today, we look at Perfetti\u2019s contract through four different lenses, starting with a Jets comparable, adding a list of the NHL\u2019s most recent RFAs, and then looking at two analytical models to project his most likely contract.<\/p>\n
Gabriel Vilardi: An in-house comparable?<\/p>\n
Two factors stopped the Jets from signing Perfetti to a long-term deal back in 2024. The first was that Perfetti\u2019s $3.25 million AAV bridge deal kept his cap hit low, giving Winnipeg an opportunity to add contracts at the 2025 trade deadline. They took a serious run at Brock Nelson that would not have been possible had Perfetti been signed to a larger cap hit on a long term deal; the strategy is sound, even if the result was a failure.<\/p>\n
The second reason was that Winnipeg was not yet sold on Perfetti\u2019s ceiling. He\u2019d scored 75 points in 140 games at the time \u2014 similar to the 78 points in 152 games Gabriel Vilardi had scored prior to his his $3.4 million AAV bridge deal the previous summer \u2014 but Perfetti shared an injury history with Vilardi, too. Neither player had played a complete 82-game season prior to signing their bridge deals. In both cases, Winnipeg chose to wait and see.<\/p>\n
In Vilardi\u2019s case, it cost them but worked out well, creating a $7.5 million AAV contract the Jets are happy to pay. He followed up his 2023 bridge deal with poor health and good results, playing with Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele on the first line and the top power play unit. He scored 97 points in 118 games in that role, then cashed in on the six year, $7.5 million AAV contract that started in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
Perfetti has scored 82 points in 150 games since signing his bridge deal. He played mostly with Ehlers and Vladislav Namestnikov in 2024-25, then a mixture of Vilardi, Adam Lowry, Jonathan Toews, and Namestnikov in 2025-26, which contributed to his decline in scoring. He also received some first-unit power play time, but didn\u2019t immediately become a mainstay on PP1 the way Vilardi did before him. You may also be aware that Winnipeg\u2019s power play scored 21 fewer goals this season<\/a> than it did in 2024-25.<\/p>\n Does Vilardi\u2019s trajectory make things simple, then? Could it be as easy as taking Perfetti\u2019s points per game and giving him two-thirds of Vilardi\u2019s cap hit percentage? Perfetti is two years younger than Vilardi was when he signed his deal, but otherwise their draft pedigree and contract trajectories have been similar.<\/p>\n If so, then Perfetti is heading for a six-year, $5.44 million AAV extension.<\/p>\n Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re, Matt Coronato, and historical precedents<\/p>\n One other way to approach Perfetti\u2019s contract projections is to look at all of last summer\u2019s restricted free agents, pick out the ones who signed long-term contracts, and compare them to Perfetti\u2019s performance to date.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a list of players drafted between 2019 and 2021 who signed long-term RFA contracts in 2025. I\u2019ve also included each player\u2019s points per game in 2024-25 and in their career before signing their contracts.<\/p>\n Player<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Contract<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Season PTS\/GP<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Career<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n 5 x $8.40 M<\/p>\n 0.87<\/p>\n 0.72<\/p>\n 6 x $7.75 M<\/p>\n 0.74<\/p>\n 0.58<\/p>\n 5 x $7.70 M<\/p>\n 0.88<\/p>\n 0.63<\/p>\n 7 x $7.45 M<\/p>\n 0.55<\/p>\n 0.41<\/p>\n 8 x $7.14 M<\/p>\n 0.86<\/p>\n 0.74<\/p>\n 6 x $7.00 M<\/p>\n 0.68<\/p>\n 0.74<\/p>\n 7 x $6.50 M<\/p>\n 0.61<\/p>\n 0.50<\/p>\n TBD<\/p>\n 0.47<\/p>\n 0.54<\/p>\n A few items jump out. The first is that most of the top young RFAs who signed long-term deals last summer have produced more points than Perfetti has to date. He lags well behind top earner Wyatt Johnston, whose $8.4 million AAV is not comparable for our purposes here. The second is that Dylan Guenther is underpaid relative to his peers and Utah did well to sign him so early in his career.<\/p>\n The third is that Perfetti\u2019s high ankle sprain could cost him a lot of money.<\/p>\n It\u2019s reductive to point solely to injury, knowing the trouble Winnipeg had with its secondary scoring this season \u2014 Toews, Lowry, and Namesntikov weren\u2019t a murderer\u2019s row of linemates for Perfetti to work with. It\u2019s also true that six out of seven players on the chart got more top unit power play time than he did. But the NHL is a league where players get paid for points and time on ice. Perfetti\u2019s injury and its impact on his season cost him points in his platform year and it will cost him money.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Perfetti scored five points in 24 games to start his season, he scored 27 points in 44 games to finish it,\u201d goes the counterargument. \u201cThat\u2019s the exact same, 50 points per 82 games scoring rate he put up in 2024-25, but this time he did it without Ehlers.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s an important argument for fans and media: It reminds us that Perfetti did produce once he got healthy and should be thought of as a viable secondary scoring option despite his low point total. It\u2019s not an argument to give him JJ Peterka money. Take Perfetti\u2019s January through April scoring rate of 0.61 points per game to Kevin Cheveldayoff and he\u2019ll argue that Perfetti needs to stay healthy before getting that kind of AAV.<\/p>\n Perfetti\u2019s closest comparables among last summer\u2019s RFAs are Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re and Matt Coronato. I suspect New York paid Lafreni\u00e8re at least partly for his pedigree, but Coronato\u2019s seven year, $6.50 million AAV contract is a sensible comparable. We\u2019ll add seven years at $7.08 million AAV, via Coronato\u2019s contract adjusted for the $104 million cap, to six years at $5.44 million AAV, via Vilardi.<\/p>\n But what if we could look at all comparable contracts, predicting Perfetti\u2019s cap hit based on a sample size bigger than the seven RFA long-term deals from last summer? The models at Evolving Hockey and AFP Analytics can sort through hundreds of contracts instead.<\/p>\n Evolving Hockey and AFP Analytics<\/p>\n Evolving Hockey<\/a>\u2019s contract projection model is really two models working in unison \u2014 one that predicts the length of a contract and one that predicts its value. If you want to pick it apart, read their glossary here<\/a>.\u00a0Here\u2019s what it projects for Perfetti\u2019s contract this summer:<\/p>\n PlayerTermCap hitLikelihood<\/p>\n 1<\/p>\n $4.03 M<\/p>\n 8%<\/p>\n 2<\/p>\n $4.49 M<\/p>\n 15%<\/p>\n 3<\/p>\n $5.41 M<\/p>\n 26%<\/p>\n 4<\/p>\n $5.76 M<\/p>\n 24%<\/p>\n 5<\/p>\n $6.04 M<\/p>\n 13%<\/p>\n 6<\/p>\n $6.46 M<\/p>\n 7%<\/p>\n 7<\/p>\n $6.96 M<\/p>\n 3%<\/p>\n 8<\/p>\n $7.64 M<\/p>\n 5%<\/p>\n If Evolving Hockey\u2019s projections come true, Perfetti could be looking at a three or a four year contract worth $5.4 million AAV or $5.8 million AAV. Note that the cap hits increase as the contract gets longer, with the biggest jump between two and three years. That passes the common sense test, with Perfetti two years away from UFA eligibility. A player\u2019s UFA years cost more.<\/p>\n