Unsurprisingly, when it comes to massive salaries in professional sports, Michael Jordan was the pacesetter.<\/p>\n
Back in July 1996, fresh off the Chicago Bulls\u2019 fourth NBA championship in six years, Jordan landed a then-unthinkable one-year, $30 million contract that blew everything else in the Big Four leagues out of the water.<\/p>\n
At the time, athlete salaries were considerably lower than they are today. Larry Bird had set a high-water mark with the $7 million deal he signed in 1991-92 with the Boston Celtics, followed by Magic Johnson\u2019s $14.6 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers three years later.<\/p>\n
And when Jordan signed for $30 million, the leading players in the other three major leagues were miles from that figure: Deion Sanders at $13.5 million in the NFL, Cecil Fielder at $9.2 million in MLB and Wayne Gretzky at $6.5 million in the NHL.<\/p>\n
Among these Big Four leagues, Jordan\u2019s contract was the first to break both the $20 million and $30 million barriers for annual athlete salaries. But he soon had company: Alex Rodriguez\u2019s 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers came four years later in December 2000, setting the table for some of the huge salaries that were to come in a cap-less MLB.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until 2012 that the New Orleans Saints\u2019 Drew Brees became the first NFLer to net $20 million, signing for five years and $100 million to start a run of incredible salary growth for top quarterbacks<\/a>. Thirteen years later, the top 11 players at the position are making north of $50 million this season,<\/a>\u00a0as some of the highest-paid athletes<\/a> in the world.<\/p>\n The NHL, meanwhile, is still waiting for its first $20 million man.<\/p>\n The reasons hockey has lagged in paying its stars are myriad, but the No. 1 factor is simply that NHL revenues are much lower. The NFL reportedly earned more than $23 billion last season, followed by MLB at $12 billion and the NBA just shy of that figure. The NHL was well back of the pack, netting just $6.6 billion for 2024-25.<\/p>\n Other factors include the NHL\u2019s hard cap and the way rosters are built and deployed, as no one hockey player can have the same impact as a generational QB or point guard. As the Florida Panthers have shown in winning back-to-back Stanley Cups, depth \u2014 including players with sizeable salaries on their third lines and second defense pairings \u2014 can be crucial to success in the playoffs.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean the NHL is far from a financial breakthrough, especially with the cap projected to skyrocket<\/a> under a recently ratified collective bargaining agreement that runs until 2030.<\/p>\n Edmonton Oilers star Leon Draisaitl leads the way among NHL cap hits, with his new $14 million-a-season contract kicking in this year. Only three others have cleared $12 million so far \u2014 the Toronto Maple Leafs\u2019 Auston Matthews ($13.25 million), the Colorado Avalanche\u2019s Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million) and the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 Connor McDavid ($12.5 million) \u2014 meaning the $20 million hurdle is still high, even for the sport\u2019s best players.<\/p>\n The other barrier is that the current CBA doesn\u2019t even allow players to make $20 million, as individual player compensation is capped at 20 percent of the $95.5 million ceiling \u2014 or $19.1 million.<\/p>\n That changes next year when the cap rises to a projected $104 million, raising the individual max to $20.8 million. Even then, it\u2019s unlikely anyone signs for the limit. Since the salary cap was instituted in 2005, only Brad Richards has agreed to a contract with an AAV of 20 percent of the cap, and that was during a transitional period when the league\u2019s ceiling was only $39 million and rapidly rising.<\/p>\n No NHL team has flirted with a 20-percent player since then, as general managers believe it would be too difficult to build a contender with so much salary allocated to a single player. The highest-salaried players on the most recent Stanley Cup-winning teams \u2014 including Sergei Bobrovsky and Aleksander Barkov this past spring with the Panthers \u2014 were making $10 million or less, which equates to only 11.3 percent of last season\u2019s $88 million cap.<\/p>\n