Connor McDavid had a chance to cash in on the most lucrative contract in NHL history, but the Edmonton Oilers star decided to leave personal gains aside to push for a Stanley Cup.
The Oilers and McDavid agreed to a two-year, $25-million extension on the eve of the regular season, pushing away concerns about his future after he went through the summer without making a decision.
But that prolonged process was by design, according to McDavid’s agent, Judd Moldaver.
During an interview on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast published Monday, Moldaver said McDavid’s heart was always in Edmonton and credited the team for not rushing the decision.
“Connor’s process was excellent. Since the beginning of the summer, we went through things really methodically. It was important that he was able to take his time with it,” Moldaver said. “While his intention, publicly and privately, has always been one thing — to win a Stanley Cup as an Edmonton Oiler — the timeline to go through that process needed to be his and his alone.
“It was never about a date circled on a calendar. It was about allowing him to be wisely patient and to think through things.”
The decision by McDavid to sign a two-year extension without seeking a raise on his $12.5-million cap hit was met by shock and criticism, considering it came not long after Kirill Kaprizov’s eight-year, $136-million contract that carries a $17 million average salary and set a new high watermark for player salaries across the league.
Moldaver said the motivation behind McDavid’s new deal was about finding the right math that would allow him to continue to push for a Stanley Cup while also protecting his individual value.
Moldaver said he never pushed for his client to consider taking a higher cap hit.
“There might have been certain permutations that I might have raised my hand and said, ‘Hey, 97, maybe not that much,’ perhaps, but ultimately, as a representative, you’re always striving to protect your client’s interests,” Moldaver explained. “(You) obviously want to push for guys to make as much money as they can. … I think in this particular case, as Connor referenced, he’s still paid very handsomely. Like he said, $25 million is still a lot of money.
“There aren’t many two-year permutations that have this high a pay rate as we’ve seen in our sport. A lot of the time, the more years you give, the higher cap hit you receive. I still think the deal is very transcendent, notwithstanding people expecting a bigger number. At the end of this, it was always about what was going to make him feel like he’s made the best decision for Connor McDavid. And I think we did that.”
Moldaver has had a history with his clients not taking the max eight-year term in their deals, most notably when Auston Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs agreed to a four-year deal in 2023 with a $13.25-million cap hit.
The agent explained that both of his clients decided not to push for the eight-year max term and that there were some parallels to both deals, although Matthews signed his under different circumstances.
“The idea is usually that when you give more years, you command more of an AAV. I think, back to the original deals the Leafs had done, we had a global pandemic, unfortunately, and that really suspended things,” Moldaver said. “And then we were unfortunately dwelling in a flat-cap era, which made some of those deals seem like they were eating way more than they may have otherwise.
“When you’re top players in the world, there’s a balance between commanding certain dollars but trying to take less. Some who really don’t know what they’re talking about, don’t really understand how it works, and have no grasp of it. But I think that these players who take short-term deals, they’re betting on themselves and there’s some elasticity and some more flexibility.”
from Sportsnet.ca
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