Inside the Connor McDavid extension: Months of negotiations that ended with a shocking phone call – The Athletic
It wasn’t until a phone call at 9:45 a.m. Mountain Time on Monday that the Edmonton Oilers found out what kind of bargain they were getting on Connor McDavid’s new contract.
Even after untold hours of conversations between key members of the team’s front office and McDavid and agent Judd Moldaver in recent months, they didn’t know what McDavid wanted in his contract until about an hour before the rest of the hockey world found out.
On the call, league sources tell The Athletic, Moldaver informed Oilers general manager Stan Bowman and CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson that McDavid wanted to keep the average annual value on his new contract exactly where it’s been the past seven years: a two-year extension with a shockingly below-market-value AAV of $12.5 million.
Consider it a welcome surprise at the conclusion of a ‘negotiation’ — “I guess if you want to call it that,” Bowman qualified — that began over dinner in late June and concluded on a cool fall morning two days before the start of the Oilers’ season.
“This is unique,” Bowman told reporters. “It was really more of a dialogue and a conversation throughout the last few months and really nothing to do with the contract itself. Usually, when you have a negotiation, it’s more about back-and-forths on the term or the structure of the deal, but that was never talked about.”
The negotiation was unique on a number of fronts, starting with the fact that Jackson was McDavid’s agent for more than a decade before taking his job with the Oilers in August of 2023. He negotiated the $100 million, eight-year contract McDavid is currently playing on, which expires next summer. Jackson had also previously worked closely with Moldaver during their time together at Wasserman Hockey.
Beyond the interpersonal dynamic is the reality that McDavid’s value is basically impossible to quantify. He’s averaged 125 points for every 82 games played during a 10-year career — good enough to stuff his trophy case with five scoring titles, four Ted Lindsay Awards, three Hart Trophies and a Conn Smythe Trophy as the 2024 playoff MVP, when he led the Oilers to within one win of the Stanley Cup.
A player with that resume could reasonably demand the maximum 20 percent salary permitted under the NHL’s collective bargaining agreement, which currently sits at $19.1 million per season.
Instead, McDavid asked for a contract that will see him earn less than at least four other players starting in 2026-27: Kirill Kaprizov ($17 million) of the Minnesota Wild; Oilers teammate Leon Draisaitl ($14 million); Auston Matthews ($13.25 million) of the Toronto Maple Leafs; and Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million) of the Colorado Avalanche.
The reason behind that act of charity?
McDavid is determined to do everything in his power to make good on a pledge to bring a Stanley Cup to Edmonton. Following the team’s second straight Final loss to the Florida Panthers in June, he took an extremely methodical approach to a decision that he considered the biggest of his professional career so far.
That included dinners, meetings and phone calls with Moldaver throughout the offseason, plus extensive conversations with his wife, Lauren, and parents, Brian and Kelly. There were also face-to-face meetings with Oilers brass throughout the summer and fall, in which McDavid was given a feel for how the organization planned to extend its competitive window in the years to come.
“It was really just the other parts of where we’re headed (as an organization) and the vision for the team and how we’re going to improve and all of those types of discussions,” Bowman said. “Honestly, I’m being genuine when I say that every conversation I’ve had with Connor or Judd over the summer and the previous weeks, we never once talked about money because this is a unique situation.
“It’s not about the money for Connor.”
Of course, the financial conversations were happening between player, agent and family in the background.
Looking at an Oilers cap sheet that has some big decisions on the horizon — they took care of another piece of business Monday by signing pending unrestricted free agent defenseman Jake Walman to a seven-year extension carrying a $7 million AAV — the McDavid camp identified $15 million as the maximum annual salary he could command while still arming the front office with the cap space needed to field a quality roster around him over the two years on his new contract, according to league sources.
However, by accepting something below that threshold, McDavid knew he could put the organization in an even stronger position for success.
That could have meant $14 million to match the number being earned by Draisaitl, but Draisaitl committed eight years to Edmonton last fall to reach that bar. McDavid was focused on something shorter.
Ultimately, as the 28-year-old worked through the process and got more comfortable with the idea of extending with the Oilers over the past week, he landed on $12.5 million as the best place to be to achieve all of his aims.
The contract will be paid almost exclusively in signing bonuses — with a $13.4 million payment due next summer and a $9.85 million payment coming in 2027 — and took the length of Monday’s quick call to finalize.
Moldaver brought a similarly abrupt ending to discussions with the Maple Leafs in August of 2023 when he phoned with news of a $53 million, four-year extension his client Matthews wished to sign with them. No haggling. No back-and-forth. The deal was announced that afternoon.
However, for Bowman, who has worked in NHL front offices for nearly two decades and previously negotiated deals for Chicago Blackhawks superstars Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews in their primes, the experience on the McDavid file was an “unprecedented type of situation.”
“Very unusual, but very interesting,” Bowman said. “I don’t know if I ever talked to Judd Moldaver as much as I have in the last month or so, but it’s been great.
“Different, but it was fun.”
