I hope if our young guys start breaking out next season Drury has the nuts to lock them in long term. This off-season the cap is tight so there's really no option. Next summer there should be some more flexibility. You look at these teams that locked in their young stars while the cap is flat to these big deals, 8 years around that ~8 million $ range... its clear as day that there's going to be countless teams with bargain deals in the not so distant future. It'll be like when MacKinnon was a +90 point player making 6.3 mil or the last few seasons of Mika making 5.35 per. Theres a boatload of them out there right now... Stützle (8.35 Mil, 8 years remaining), Jack Hughes (8 Mil, 7 years left), Tage Thompson (7.14 Mil, 7 more years), Heiskanen (8.45 Mil, 6 years left).. those are deals that even right now seem a bit undervalued.
Then you have a tier of young stars just below... Kyrou, Robert Thomas, Boldy, Bratt, Cozens, Fiala, Sergachev, Larkin... you could name a number of other guys, the list goes on and on. These are players locked in around that ~8 Mil number for another 6-8 years. Those are fair numbers as it sits today. Now, you follow the modest projections the NHL has set, a gradual jump the next couple seasons, in a few years we'll be around a 90 million cap ceiling. The premiere players will be making 12.5 per year, easy. The best players are already at that or around that number. Guys like Huberdeau and Gaudreau just signed for ~10 Mil per during the flat cap. Barkov just signed a giant deal at that number.
Now could you imagine what those sorts of players will be pulling in a couple seasons? Guys like McDavid, Draistail, Rantanen, Kyle Connor, Marner.. their deals are all up in 2-3 seasons.. the players in the last paragraph are pulling this money while the cap is flat. McDavid is easily getting 15, and thats conservative. These guys will be getting ~12.5 by then. The crazy thing is you take someone like Buchnevich who's also up in a couple years.. if he maintains this level of play that'll be the sort of caliber of player that's sniffing 10 million per year. Not much different than some of the giant deals we saw signed right before covid, where the thought at the time was they would look like fair deals as the cap rose (which obviously did not materialize because of covid). Think Skinner at 9, Panarin 11.6, Trouba 8.5, Karlsson 11.5... those numbers are more in line with what we're going to see when the cap rises, as it was thought to be at the time. I would even argue that the young premier guys like Fox (9.5), Makar (9), M. Tkachuk (9.5) under 10 million in a couple years will be a bargain.
Barring any major injuries, and if they can maintain a high level of play it's gonna be crazy to see how undervalued a number of players will likely become. Even our own... Mika, if he can be one those guys that can keep his level of play well into his mid 30s, 8.5 in 2025 for a 1C will be cheap. Trocheck and Chytil will be closer to 3rd line money.
