September 20, 2022<\/a><\/p>\nThat type of structure will soon become a thing of the past. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, which takes effect on Sept. 15, signing bonuses can account for no more than 60 percent of a standard player contract.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon\u2019s first two seasons carried a base salary of just $775,000 \u2014 the league minimum at the time. In 2025-26, that number increased slightly to $800,000.<\/p>\n
Those years aren\u2019t affected. But the new CBA also raises the league minimum salary over the life of the agreement. Minimum salary climbs to $850,000 in 2026-27, $900,000 in 2027-28, $950,000 in 2028-29, and $1 million beginning in 2029-30.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where the adjustment comes in.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon\u2019s contract originally called for a base salary of $990,000 in both 2029-30 and 2030-31. Once the minimum salary reaches $1 million, those figures no longer comply with the CBA, even though his signing bonuses push his total earnings far beyond the minimum.<\/p>\n
As a result, the final two years of his contract each receive a $10,000 increase in base salary. That accounts for the additional $20,000 added to the total value of the deal.<\/p>\n
Rather than increasing the cap hit by $10,000 in each of those final two seasons, the NHL spreads the added value evenly across the five remaining years of the contract. The result is a $4,000 increase in MacKinnon\u2019s cap hit each season, bringing it from $12.6 million to $12.604 million.<\/p>\n
MacKinnon isn\u2019t alone. This isn\u2019t even the first time something like this has happened.<\/p>\n
Following the memorandum of understanding signed after the NHL\u2019s 2020 COVID pause, several contracts, including Auston Matthews\u2019, received similar adjustments because of changes to minimum salary rules.<\/p>\n
The impact on Colorado is negligible. Had MacKinnon also taken a league-minimum base salary in 2026-27 instead of the $9.15 million salary he is scheduled to earn this season, the adjustment would have been much larger and carried a more significant cap consequence.<\/p>\n
Instead, the Avalanche are only dealing with an extra $4,000 on the cap in each of the next five seasons for their superstar center. <\/p>\n
As PuckPedia detailed in its breakdown,<\/a> MacKinnon is one of more than 100 players whose contracts were adjusted because of the new minimum salary provisions. The changes affect both standard player contracts and entry-level deals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You may have noticed that Colorado Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon\u2019s cap hit received a slight, seemingly random increase.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1223,39780,385,99],"class_list":["post-777116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-colorado-avalanche","tag-nathan-mackinnon","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}