A run-stopping linebacker. A hard-throwing right-handed reliever. A 2021 first-round pick who has yet to average 10 points per game.
All three of them, in 2026, will count $12.5 million against their respective teams’ payrolls, the same amount as the greatest hockey player on the planet.
That might be the most necessary bit of contextualization for the two-year, $25 million contract extension Connor McDavid gifted the Edmonton Oilers on Monday. He’s a potential Mount Rushmore player in his sport, operating at what could be his absolute peak, and he’s about to spend two seasons making 25 percent less than the highest-paid player in the NHL, with a salary commensurate with depth players in the three other major North American leagues.
All due respect, of course, to the three players cited above: Robert Spillane of the New England Patriots, Jordan Hicks of the Boston Red Sox and Moses Moody of the Golden State Warriors. No two leagues are the same, in terms of salary-cap ceiling, roster size, contract structure and other factors — but it’s striking to see where McDavid’s average annual salary would fall in the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.
McDavid, recognized as the greatest player in the NHL today and one of the greatest in league history, was already a bargain on his current contract, the eight-year, $100 million deal he signed in 2017.
McDavid was eligible to sign an extension on July 1, and after some brief but intense consternation, McDavid re-upped with the Oilers. But his $12.5 million AAV puts him behind Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov ($17 million), Oilers teammate Leon Draisaitl ($14 million) and Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million).
“It’s a unique situation. We weren’t going to sign a long-term deal,” McDavid told reporters in Edmonton on Tuesday. “Two years at that number makes a lot of sense. It gives us a chance to extend our (championship) window here in Edmonton. Lenny’s (his miniature Bernedoodle) not going to go hungry with that money. We’ll be fine.”
Still, McDavid’s decision is astounding. Rather than sign a max-level, market-resetting deal for more than $20 million a season, which he easily could have done had he become a free agent next July, the 28-year-old is foregoing a raise entirely, opting to leave the Oilers with more salary-cap space so they can (potentially) build a roster capable of winning a championship instead of losing in the Stanley Cup Final, which they have done in the past two seasons.
What it’s not, though, is purely altruistic. Winning a championship on his terms, while playing alongside his close friends, is McDavid’s personal priority. It’s also temporary. In two years, McDavid will be eligible to sign another contract extension, and at age 30, he will still command huge money. If he reaches free agency in three years, McDavid will get his mega-bucks.
Plus, this decision — glaring and remarkable as it might be — is not as unique as it might seem. Superstars in other sports have taken significant discounts in order for their teams to have the financial resources necessary to compete at the highest level. It tends to work out, which is good news for McDavid and the Oilers, but there are exceptions. We looked at some of the closest comparisons to McDavid’s new contract since 2000.
NHL: Sidney Crosby
This is as close as we’ll get to an apples-to-apples comparison. Crosby, a generational NHL talent, in 2012 signed a deal worth $8.7 million annually. At the time, that salary represented 13.5 percent of the NHL’s salary cap. McDavid’s new contract comes in at 12 percent. Crosby, like McDavid, didn’t carry the highest cap hit in the league; that was Alex Ovechkin ($9.54 million). Crosby, like McDavid, didn’t carry the highest cap hit on his own team; that was Evgeni Malkin ($9.5 million). Crosby, like McDavid, was willfully taking sub-market value to chase championships in his chosen spot with his closest friends.
If you’re trying to decide which deal is more team-friendly, though, there are some important differences on each side. Crosby’s extension was for 12 seasons, not two, meaning that Pittsburgh locked him up to a below-market deal through the entirety of his prime. The NHL permitted back-diving contract structures at the time, though, which made the decision a bit more player-friendly. Crosby earned a huge chunk of the contract’s overall value in its early years, including $36 million of it in the first three seasons, while Pittsburgh reaped the benefits of the averaged-out cap hit. Crosby was also less than one full season removed from concussion-related issues that had previously thrown his future in doubt and made the contract uninsurable.
The other variable, of course, is that Crosby had already won the Stanley Cup, and Pittsburgh’s front office had more consistently shown the ability to surround him with quality teammates. McDavid hasn’t been so lucky.
MLB: The deferred-money crowd
We’re in October, so this one is top of mind. The defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers are the runaway leaders in this department, with more than $1 billion of deferred money headed to eight different players starting in 2028. Of that, $680 million, of course, is earmarked to unicorn Shohei Ohtani, who is earning $2 million in cash salary per season over the course of his 10-year contract.
For a team as flush as the Dodgers, this is the definition of a win-win setup. They don’t have to pay Ohtani and Co. upfront, instead allowing the money to accrue interest that counts toward the eventual payouts, relatively minimizing their luxury-tax bill and maintaining the shorter-term financial flexibility necessary to sign more talented players.
On the players’ end of things, it’s a matter of delayed gratification. The money accrued surpasses the money originally owed. Ohtani, freakishly talented as he may be, was not going to earn $700 million over 10 years in a normally structured deal. Financially speaking, it’s team-friendly and player-friendly in relatively equal parts.
McDavid, for comparison, is effectively saying “thanks, but no thanks” to more than $15 million over the course of two seasons. That money isn’t going into an escrow account; it’s going directly into the pockets of his current and future teammates. The maximum amount that the Dodgers can pay their players is largely theoretical because of the way MLB is set up. The maximum amount that the Oilers can pay their players next season is $104 million, the NHL’s salary-cap ceiling.
NFL: Ultra-elite quarterbacks
In 2013, Tom Brady started a trend that continued for the rest of his career. Brady, one of the best quarterbacks of all time, didn’t necessarily have a salary to match that status. He agreed to a three-year extension worth $33 million guaranteed, saving the New England Patriots $8 million in cap space in 2013 and $7 million the following year. Reports then indicated that the money was earmarked for receiver Wes Welker, who wound up signing with the Denver Broncos. It went to Danny Amendola instead. In 2016, Brady signed a deal that gave the Patriots $1 million options in 2018-19 in case Jimmy Garoppolo stole his job. That, as you may remember, did not happen. Brady and the Patriots won two more Super Bowls instead.
Brady kept that up with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; after winning the Super Bowl in 2021, they agreed on a four-year extension with three voidable years, allowing his previous $25 million annual salary to be spread out over the entirety of the deal. That freed up nearly $19 million in cap space to retain players such as Rob Gronkowski.
We’ve seen similar approaches from Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. Mahomes in 2020 signed a 10-year, $450 million extension with the Chiefs that was a record at the time but team-friendly in its own way — the deal had multiple built-in potential restructure points with only $63 million guaranteed (14 percent). In the years since, 15 quarterbacks have signed contracts worth more annually, typically with 40 percent to 55 percent guaranteed, including Kyler Murray and Kirk Cousins. Mahomes, for his part, has won two more Super Bowls and has yet to miss an AFC championship game as a starter.
Allen, meanwhile, was coming off an MVP season when he signed his 2025 extension. He didn’t re-top the market either, signing a deal that pays him $55 million this season — less than Dak Prescott — and allowed the Bills to sign several key free agents ahead of the 2025 season.
The primary similarities between those three and McDavid: all were the faces of their franchise, if not their leagues, and all three left significant money on the table rather than signing contracts that put them atop earning lists for the duration. McDavid might have left a larger chunk — approximately 40 percent — but he also set himself up to sign a mega-deal in the near future, whether with the Oilers or somewhere else.
NBA: Forward-thinking superstars
Last summer, New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson signed an extension worth $156.5 million over four years, rather than waiting until July 2025 to sign a max deal worth a guaranteed $113 million more. Brunson, if all goes well, will be able to sign in 2028 for $417 million over five years. In that case, he’d get his money back — but it’s a calculated gamble for a small point guard who, by that point, will be 32 years old. The Knicks, in the meantime, have been able to re-sign key players and acquire others, such as star center Karl-Anthony Towns, without hitting the NBA’s dreaded second salary apron.
Brunson’s motivations, combined with the relatively short term of the contract (four years) and the possibility of a larger payout down the road, make him a fitting, somewhat imperfect comparison for McDavid. Among NBA players, he’s the most extreme example, but he’s not the only one.
When LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade with the Miami Heat, all three left money on the table: approximately $15 million per over the duration of their original six-year deals, signed in 2010. James and Bosh signed for $110.1 million, Wade for $107 million. James opted out in 2014 after winning titles in 2012 and 2013, thanks in part to the addition of Ray Allen — a Hall of Famer who hit a game-tying three-pointer in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals against San Antonio.
Kevin Durant, after joining the Golden State Warriors in 2016-17 and winning NBA Finals MVP, signed a new contract that paid him $25 million — $1.5 million less than the previous season and $9.5 million less than the maximum he was eligible to be paid. That decision allowed Golden State to, among other things, re-sign core player Andre Iguodala. They won a second straight title that season, with Durant again winning Finals MVP.
“I knew he was going to give up enough money to allow us to keep Andre and (Shaun Livingston),” coach Steve Kerr told the Bay Area News Group before the season. “I didn’t know he was going to go beyond that. A remarkable gesture.”
Kerr compared Durant to Tim Duncan, another first-tier Hall of Famer who left his share of money on the table. In his final five NBA seasons, most of which he spent as a still incredibly effective player, Duncan never made more than $10.4 million. Conservatively, that saved San Antonio tens of millions in cap space and helped set them up to win the 2014 title, Duncan’s fifth.
“He made max money, and then at key times in his career he took a little less so they could add a player here and there,” Kerr said. “The way the league works, the way the CBA works, it really kind of is up to the star player at key times to take a little haircut here and there.
“Whether that’s fair or not, I don’t know. But I do know that Tim knew it was dramatically helping his own career, and KD understands the same thing. In the end, he’s going to make a fortune in his career. Already has, and he hopefully is going to win more titles, and that’s what he cares about.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: S. Mellar, Joe Murphy, Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
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