But, on the bolded, it depends a lot on where you live. I have a friend in Seattle that pays $2,500 a month rent for an apartment that is just under 450 square feet.
Since this is the forum for the Toronto Maple Leafs, I would have assumed that at least some of you would be familiar with the current rental situation in Toronto. Currently $2,500 gets you a very small 1bdrm condo downtown (I know this because a friend of mine is looking right now). Fine for a single guy but I personally would want something bigger (and I don't make 1m per year). Plus utilities. if you're a single guy $50k per year (bit over 4k per month) is a little high but if you have a family then you could easily spend that.
For those of you saying the money can be "sheltered in RRSP", you should know that you can only shelter a very small part of your income that way. ($26,500 this year... so basically a rounding error in the calculations). Rest assured that you can't escape the tax man that easily.
Those of you talking about buying a place... you appear to not be taking into account transaction costs. As a hockey player without an NMC you might be moving at any time... the transaction costs (realtor, Ontario land transfer tax) for buying/selling even a $600k condo would eat you alive. If you don't know where you'll be next year, better to rent.
The "hockey related expenses" of 70k sounds high to me... i would have thought the team would supply that stuff? I guess if you want to hire Gary Roberts in the summer as your trainer he's not cheap.
3k/month for basic living expenses sounds right to me, if anything it might be a bit light. Remember you're travelling and eating out a lot, and hanging out with wealthy people, and expected to dress well... this is not a brown bag/student cafeteria environment. You can quibble with the 3k/month in miscellaneous expenses, but that doesn't change the underlying conclusion very much. You can maybe find 100k of savings in there if you really look but then you're still only saving 340k out of your million.
That said Holl is looking at 8mCAD so he should be able to bank 2.5m or so... not quite retirement money unless you're frugal but an excellent start.