Draisaitl, Henrique, Janmark face up to the pickle of the Stanley Cup Discount contract

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Published Jun 30, 2024  •  Last updated 11 hours ago  •  4 minute read

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You’ve heard of the hometown discount, hockey players taking a bit less on their contract and/or term so they can stick with their home team in the salary cap era of the National Hockey League. That’s never been too big of a draw for players in Edmonton, possibly because the salary cap era coincided with Edmonton’s Decade of Darkness-plus, 2006-2019.

But perhaps Edmonton will do better with a different kind of discount, the Stanley Cup Discount, which comes to teams set to challenge year in, year out for the Stanley Cup.

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Edmonton is now in that select group of elite teams. It made the Conference Final in 2022, the Divisional Final in 2023, and the Stanley Cup Final in 2024. The McDavid-Draisaitl Oilers have yet to win the Stanley Cup, but it’s not madness for them to envision that glorious day. Players keen to be a part of that may well to decide to take less in terms of pay and/or term to make that happen.

We’ll see if the Stanley Cup Discount has any impact this summer when it comes to signing present and future Unrestricted Free Agents such as Leon Draisaitl, Evan Bouchard, Connor Brown, Warren Foegele, Sam Gagner, Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, Corey Perry and Vincent Desharnais, to name all of the main ones.

Draisaitl’s contract scenarios

It’s the top players on an NHL team who set the tone so let’s look at Draisaitl somewhat more closely in this regard and what a Stanley Cup discount contract would look like, as opposed to Draisaitl pushing all-out to get top dollar. I should say I won’t judge any player who pushes for that top dollar. For players who have yet to sign a major contract or two in the NHL, it would be difficult for them to turn down the highest offer.

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I’m good with Draisaitl if he signs here on Stanley Cup Discount, but also good if he signs for top dollar in Edmonton, or moves on to another team for the maximum 20 per cent of the salary cap, something that would be a challenge for Edmonton to match due to overall cap constraints.

To get a sense of what such a Stanley Cup Discount contract might look like, I searched on Cap Friendly for  the most similar players to Draisaitl who had already signed lucrative third contracts and came up with eight names, eight superstar forwards, Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Artemin Panarin and David Pastrnak. The eight of them averaged 27 years of age when they signed their third contracts, which went for an average term of 7.9 years with an average cap hit of $11.0 million per season.

Of course the cap has gone up considerably over the years, so the most important number is the average cap hit of these players for when they each signed their deals. That worked out to be 14.9 per cent of the cap.

I reckon if Draisaitl signs for anything less than 15 per cent of the cap, he’s taking a Stanley Cup Discount.

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In my chart (below), I’ve described four contract scenarios for Draisaitl, low and middle, which would represent him taking a Stanley Cup Discount, and high and and highest, which would not be considered any kind of team discount.

The low scenario would see Draisaitl get paid $11.44 million per year, 13 per cent of the current $88 million cap.

The middle scenario would be $13.2 million per year, 15 per cent of the cap.

Now we move out of Stanley Cup Discount territory.

The high scenario would be $14.08 per year, 16 per cent of the cap. That’s about the percentage that Matthews of the Leafs took on his new deal.

The highest scenario would see Draisaitl paid $17.6 million per, the full 20 per cent of the cap allowed under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. If Draisaitl wanted to get this amount, I could see him getting it in free agency. Some team would pay.

There are some players and agents still hard-wired to see any star playing taking less than the maximum possible amount as a failure and a bad idea, but that’s old school thinking, coming out of the era where there was no salary cap, just a battle between players and owners for which side could get the most money.

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Now the battle on cap teams is between all the players on the squad for the same maximum amount allowed in any year under the cap.

Why would a player accept a Stanley Cup Discount? To help his team win the Stanley Cup. Less more for one excellent player means more money to sign other good-to-great players. It’s not a trade-off that works for every player but it works for some of them.

We shall see if it works for any Edmonton UFA players. I’ll applaud them if they go that route, but accept it if they don’t. It’s their call.

At the Cult of Hockey

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