In the NHL, contracts matter. For better or worse, every player is judged based on the money he makes and whether he’s worth the price. It may not matter as much as it used to, but it still matters.
This piece is about the players who are not worth the money — the worst deals in the league. It’s when you ask yourself — “How is this guy making that much?” — but in a bad way.
There are a number of bad deals out there. According to each player’s projected value over the remainder of their deals, these are the league’s 10 worst contracts.
Did the Panthers and Lightning fleece the Leafs?
Sean McIndoe and Jonas Siegel
The goal here is to grade contracts empirically, with the same context being applied to each player across the league: How much value does each player bring to the table per year and over the life of the contract? The way that’s measured comes from comparing a player’s Net Rating and the expected salary that comes with it to a player’s current contract.
What players have already done holds no merit; this is about the future value of the deal, with age effects based on player comps taken into account while accounting for expected salary growth. Contract clauses and bonus structure are important, but not considered with this assessment. Players on LTIR were not considered.
1. Jonathan Huberdeau
Contract: $10.5M x five years
Surplus Value: -$30M
Positive Value Probability: 1 percent
For the third straight season, Jonathan Huberdeau tops our list of the worst contracts in hockey. No shock here, but even in a rising cap world it’s difficult to justify $10.5 million for a 33-year-old forward who scored at just a 41-point clip last season.
Huberdeau’s production just keeps sliding in Calgary and it feels impossible to imagine him coming anywhere close to living up to the money at any time during the deal. There will be a point where $10.5 million will be low-end top-line money, but that likely comes when Huberdeau is 36 or 37. And he’s already not that now to begin with.
I do wonder if a change of scenery with some retained salary could serve Huberdeau well. But as long as he’s a Flame, he’s got the worst deal in hockey.
2. Chandler Stephenson
Contract: $6.3M x five years
Surplus Value: -$26M
Positive Value Probability: 1 percent
On the surface, Chandler Stephenson may not seem that bad. He’s scored at a 50-point pace in each of his two seasons with the Kraken and eats big minutes, clocking around 19.5 minutes each year.
What Stephenson does in those minutes, though, is a major reason the Kraken have fallen on such hard times. Seattle is paying for a second-line center, playing Stephenson like a first-line center and getting something closer to a fourth liner. His macro-level impacts at five-on-five are that bad, with a 39 percent xG rate that was among the worst in the league. Stephenson may earn some points via opportunity, but he’s not a winning player.
One does wonder what he could be without Seattle’s strange obsession with putting him in a heavy matchup role. Stephenson plays some of the toughest minutes in hockey and is floundering in them with one of the worst defensive impacts in the league.
With a lessened burden, perhaps Stephenson could bump up to the third-line territory. But even in an easier role, it’s difficult to imagine the 32-year-old forward living up to his current price tag. Stephenson doesn’t have many comps due to how uniquely poor his profile is, but it’s worth noting that only two of 15 made it past Year 3 from this point out: Derick Brassard and Jason Chimera.
3. Adin Hill
Contract: $6.3M x five years
Surplus Value: -$25M
Positive Value Probability: 5 percent
We have just one goalie on the list of worst contracts, but it’s a doozy: Adin Hill’s five-year eyesore at $6.3 million per year.
This is the risk of paying for average, especially for a goalie who had just one season to his name playing over 35 games. To Hill’s credit, he was great that year in 2024-25, saving 11 goals above expected. And he was great during Vegas’ Cup win in 2023. But sandwiching those seasons are a mid-year as a 1B (2023-24) and an injury-plagued year, where he lost the starting job and was one of the league’s worst goalies. Hill’s minus-15 GSAx last season was the fifth-worst mark in the league, but the worst mark on a per-game basis among regulars.
It’s possible Hill bounces back in a different locale. For now, he has an exceptionally bloated contract for a backup and a lot to prove. That the deal was one factor that spelled the end for Pavel Dorofeyev’s time in Vegas is arguably the worst part.
4. Leo Carlsson
Contract: $18M x five years
Surplus Value: -$25M
Positive Value Probability: 6 percent
The Anaheim Ducks matched Philadelphia’s offer sheet on Leo Carlsson, and his placement on this list is exactly why the decision might’ve been legitimately difficult. Carlsson has a ton of growth potential, obviously, but $18 million is still a high-end rate reserved for the absolute best players in the world. Carlsson could get there, but even if that’s by Year 4 or 5, that’s a lot of cash to pay in the first three seasons for a maybe. If that. Over the total deal, the odds of Carlsson adding $90 million of value to Anaheim’s bottom line are low.
Still, it’s something the Ducks had to do because the draft pick compensation they would receive in return was an even worse bet. A bunch of mid-to-late firsts for a potential superstar in his prime? Meh, no thanks.
In the sense that the Ducks got to keep Carlsson around, it’s a win. But the contract efficiency aspect is a massive loss that will likely limit Anaheim’s ceiling over the length of Carlsson’s deal. Or at least until he becomes an $18 million player, which doesn’t feel likely anytime soon.
5. Jacob Trouba
Contract: $8.3M x four years
Surplus Value: -$21M
Positive Value Probability: 1 percent
The second this contract dropped, it felt like an immediate contender for this list. And what a debut for Jacob Trouba’s new deal right in the top five. That’s despite just four years of term; it’s very difficult to rank this high without a lot of runway to build up negative surplus. The Sharks found a way with Trouba, who somehow earned a raise on his previous deal.
I get that Trouba had a modest bounce-back last year with the Ducks, but it was nowhere near enough to earn over $8 million. Trouba has some great intangible elements and plays the game with a fierce edge, but his one-ice value is closer to No. 4/5 territory than what this deal expects: a No. 2 defenseman. It’s been a very long time since Trouba has been that. He had a one-off season at that level in 2021-22. But not since his time in Winnipeg has Trouba consistently put up top-pair numbers. And he had a lot of help there that he won’t have with the Sharks.
If there’s any slim hope here, it’s that a fresh start in a new locale with an up-and-coming team can coax that version of Trouba out. It’s extremely unlikely, hence the one percent chance of positive value, but stranger things have happened.
My guess: The Sharks will task Trouba with too much responsibility à la his time with the Rangers. But just because a defenseman gets top-pair minutes and top-pair money doesn’t mean he’s actually top-pair quality.
6. Trent Frederic
Contract: $3.9M x seven years
Surplus Value: -$22M
Positive Value Probability: 5 percent
Thanks to more clarity on the rising cap, the threshold for what a $3.9 million deal entails has dropped since Trent Frederic signed last summer. Then, the expectation called for a high-end third liner. Now, that’s dropped closer to low-end, which is plain to see from some of the players getting that kind of money this summer.
The problem is that Frederic’s own performance last year dropped him even further below that line, where he’s now firmly in fourth-line territory. And not a quality fourth-liner either. Frederic had just seven points in 74 games last season and was a real drag at five-on-five. His contract now feels like a complete anchor where he’s being paid nearly $4 million to be basically replacement level.
The question now is whether Frederic can return to form. He isn’t that far removed from third-line territory, which was part of the bet the Oilers made when they signed him. The hope was Frederic would return to that level when healthy; instead, Edmonton saw him drop further toward the abyss.
A new coach and more opportunity could get Frederic back on track, but for now that’s a tough sell after his performance over the past two seasons. Even if he does return, his contract is still a lesson for other teams: Don’t give extreme term to depth players — especially if it doesn’t come with any notable AAV discount. Even in a rising cap world, that lesson remains true.
7. Jake Walman
Contract: $7M x seven years
Surplus Value: -$23M
Positive Value Probability: 13 percent
What a treat it is to see the money Stan Bowman saved on Connor McDavid’s sweetheart deal used on back-to-back deals on the worst contracts list.
While the Frederic deal was baffling from the get-go, the Jake Walman extension deserves some leeway. The level he showed in 2024-25 looked truly high-end and he looked like a perfect fit within the Oilers system to close the season and in the playoffs.
The problem is how erratic Walman’s annual output has been over the past four seasons; he might be one of the league’s most inconsistent players. That means the Oilers bought him at a high, expecting a No. 3 for a majority of the deal. Walman played far below that level in 2025-26, enough to put him in No. 4 territory going into 2026-27 — with a trajectory well below what his paycheck entails. Walman’s history suggests that some patience should’ve been exercised, perhaps, but a large onus on Walman’s placement on this list currently falls on him. He didn’t hold up his end of the bargain immediately after signing.
There’s plenty of time to mitigate that, though, with the contract set to kick in this season. Walman’s value is currently at a low; can he get back on track under a new coach? The offensive tools are there for him to do so, but the defense needs to be cleaned up after a difficult year.
8. Brett Kulak
Contract: $4.5M x five years
Surplus Value: -$18M
Positive Value Probability: 1 percent
Was Brett Kulak’s sudden and epic decline last season for real?
That’s always a tough question to answer for a defenseman in his 30s with some miles on him. That it was so sudden after years of playing quality hockey at a No. 4/5 level warrants some optimism that it was just a blip for Kulak. The Avalanche are a savvy enough organization to earn some benefit of the doubt on that front.
The trouble with Kulak, though, is that his drop-off at five-on-five wasn’t exactly an isolated incident; it was consistent across three different playoff teams. Kulak’s relative impact on xG was minus-0.48 in Edmonton, minus-0.14 in Pittsburgh, and a ghastly minus-1.2 in Colorado. In all three locales, his impact on goals was even worse.
There’s a chance Kulak can bounce back. But given how poor his most recent output was, there may be a far greater chance that his days as a high-end third-pair option are over.
9. Alex Tuch
Contract: $10.5M x eight years
Surplus Value: -$24M
Positive Value Probability: 19 percent
It’s difficult not to be an Alex Tuch fan after what he’s shown in Buffalo the past five years. Over the last two, he’s been a consistent threat for 35 goals and 65 points despite not earning much time on the top power play. That’s hard to do and it’s Tuch’s five-on-five play-driving ability that’s his main calling card. That he’s not bad defensively is an added bonus.
But even in a rising cap world, $10.5 million is a lot of money to be giving a 30-year-old power forward. That’s the primary issue here, as it’s unlikely that Tuch will age as gracefully as the cap is set to rise. The deal might look OK for the first couple of years, but things could get really ugly in the second half of it as Tuch approaches 35 and beyond. A lot of Tuch’s comps had a relatively harsh age curve that could spell trouble for Washington.
The context of a weak free agent class and a whole lot of money available makes Tuch’s deal a relatively easy pill to swallow in the short term for the Capitals. He makes this team a fairly solid playoff bet in a deep East.
But the context of the entire contract for our purposes can’t be ignored either. When we’re only one year removed from Mitch Marner and Mikko Rantanen earning just $1.5 million more, Tuch’s deal becomes too hard to justify from a cap-efficiency perspective.
10. Elias Pettersson
Contract: $11.6M x six years
Surplus Value: -$20M
Positive Value Probability: 14 percent
It’s obvious from Elias Pettersson’s prior trajectory what the thought process was when the Canucks signed him to a massive $11.6 million deal. Pettersson was once one of the top players in the world, firmly in his prime, but his decline over the last two years has been dramatic.
It’s been enough to put him well below the $11.6 million threshold, making him a difficult trade target given the significant level of risk attached. The chance that Pettersson can revert to his old ways is obviously tantalizing. The chance that his game degrades further can’t be ignored and that divide is the reason he lands on this list.
A new locale may be all that’s needed to get the old Pettersson back. But at this price, a prospective team needs to be damn sure about it. The odds aren’t in their favor.
Optimistically, one clue to Pettersson’s future might be in his top comp: Paul Stastny. After starting his career incredibly strong, Stastny’s game dropped off quicker than expected before he settled in as a consistent low-end 1C. If Pettersson’s game can hold for as long as Stastny’s did, it’s possible he can settle into the plus-six to plus-10 Net Rating range — and be worth the money in the back half of the deal.
For now, Pettersson’s value just needs to stop the bleeding.
Honorable Mentions: Sean Couturier, Alexander Romanov, Michael McCarron, Darnell Nurse, Bowen Byram
