The NHL landscape has changed forever, again.
It’s no secret that the pay scale for NHL star players transformed the moment Leo Carlsson put pen to paper on a five-year, $18-million AAV offer sheet from the Philadelphia Flyers that was ultimately matched by the Anaheim Ducks.
By signing the deal, Carlsson immediately reset the market. The second-overall pick from the 2023 NHL Draft became the highest-paid player by AAV in league history, surpassing Kirill Kaprizov’s $17M AAV he signed with the Minnesota Wild in September of 2025.
Carlsson’s deal sent the NHL world into a frenzy as it changed the conversation around player contracts — not only from an offer sheet front, but also with the possibility of a player receiving the maximum contract under the current CBA.
The max AAV a player can sign for in the NHL is 20 per cent of whatever the salary cap is at the time. For 2026-27, the salary cap has been set at $104 million, meaning the maximum individual salary can be $20.8M AAV. With a projected salary cap of $113M for 2027-28, the max would rise to $22.6M AAV.
Carlsson’s monster deal comes in at 17.31 per cent of the cap for the 2026-27 season.
There has only been one player to receive the maximum 20 per cent contract at the time of their signing in NHL history. That was Brad Richards in 2006. When the salary cap was $39 million, Richards signed a five-year, $7.8M AAV contract extension with the Tampa Bay Lightning. But when the deal actually kicked in during the 2006-07 season, the salary cap had jumped to $44 million, making Richards’ cap hit 17.7 per cent.
So, while Carlsson’s record-setting AAV was shocking, we could now realistically see multiple players demand a max contract in the near future.
Here are some players who might be in that conversation.
If there is one team looking at how Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek handled business leading up to this summer, it’s Mike Grier and the San Jose Sharks. And only because they’ll want to avoid that same offer sheet situation with Macklin Celebrini.
The Sharks know they have a generational talent with Celebrini, who was drafted first overall in the 2024 NHL Draft and just finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting during his sophomore season.
Celebrini tallied 45 goals and set a Sharks franchise record for the most points in a single season (115), beating Joe Thornton’s total of 114 from 2006-07.
During the big episode of 32 Thoughts going through each team, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was adamant that the Sharks will not allow this to reach July 1, 2027.
Friedman even jokingly roleplayed how the conversations from the Sharks’ office to Celebrini might go: “Macklin, you deserve the max. On the ice, off the ice, you deserve it one billion per cent. Is there any way we can sign you without giving it to you so we can do some things around you?”
Celebrini also finds himself in an interesting spot if he does indeed want the max. He could sign right now for $20.8M AAV (2025-26’s max contract) or wait until the salary cap for the 2027-28 season becomes official (projected to be $113M) and sign for $22.6M AAV.
Either way, the Sharks will be willing to back up the Brinks truck for Celebrini. The only hope for Grier and the Sharks is that Celebrini decides to take less than what he deserves, as Connor McDavid did with the Edmonton Oilers in 2017.
Coming out of McDavid’s rookie deal, it was the same kind of talk as Celebrini — he deserved the max by his work on and off the ice, but decided to sign an eight-year deal worth $12.5M AAV in the summer of 2017. When McDavid’s deal kicked in for the 2018-19 season, his contract was worth 15.72 per cent of the cap — a major discount.
Just like Celebrini, Cale Makar is eligible to sign an extension right now, and there is no reason why he couldn’t demand the max if he wants it.
At just 27 years old, Makar has already put together a Hall of Fame career in the NHL, winning both the Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe trophies in 2022 and the Norris Trophy twice already in 2022 and 2025. Not to mention the 507 career points he’s amassed in just 470 career games.
Makar has been widely considered the best defenceman in the world for the last five years. Oddly enough, people began looking at Makar that way the season after he re-signed with the Avalanche for six years at $9M AAV.
Makar’s contract has been viewed as a steal this entire time. With Makar signed at an AAV that accounted for only 11.04 per cent of the cap when he signed in 2021, it helped the Avalanche add more talent around him and Nathan MacKinnon, leading to their great teams in recent years. But now it’s time for the Avalanche to pay up.
Connor McDavid (UFA 2028)
This has to be the most interesting name of the bunch. Everyone knows that Connor McDavid — widely considered the best overall player today — could demand a max contract in 2028 from either the Oilers or any of the 31 other teams that would be willing to pay him that. He deserves it.
But who’s to say he will? As previously mentioned, McDavid had the option in 2017 to do it and passed it up. He also had the chance again this past year and didn’t. In fact, even though he got the same AAV on his last two-year deal signed in October of 2025, he actually took a smaller percentage of the cap.
The deal McDavid signed in 2017 was worth 15.72 per cent, while the latest was only worth 12.02. McDavid has taken less twice now to give the Oilers a chance to build a better team around him in order to try and win the Stanley Cup.
If McDavid wants the max, he will get it. But going off his history, it’s tough to say he will take it.
Being the man to reset the market wouldn’t be a new thing for Auston Matthews.
In August 2023, Matthews signed a four-year, $13.25M AAV deal, making him the highest-paid player by AAV in NHL history at the time, beating MacKinnon’s $12.6M AAV. When the deal kicked in 2024-25, it was worth 15.06 per cent of the cap.
Because of lingering injuries over the last two seasons before being knocked out for the remainder of the 2025-26 season by Radko Gudas on March 12 following a knee-on-knee hit, Matthews hasn’t produced to the level of a $13.25M AAV player.
If Matthews is able to display anything near his play during the 2021-22 to 2023-24 seasons — when he won two Hart trophies and put up 69 goals in a single season — during the next two years, he will be able to demand the max, whether it’s from the Maple Leafs or not.
Connor Bedard, the last player on this list, comes with a bit of a caveat. Bedard is the only player on the list who still needs a contract before the start of the 2026-27 season.
Bedard was deemed the ‘next McDavid’ back in junior hockey after putting up 100 points as a 16-year-old in the WHL, and the excitement around him continued to build all the way until he was drafted first overall by the Chicago Blackhawks in 2023.
Since joining the NHL though, Bedard has struggled to live up to the hype.
Even though he was over a point per game in the 2025-26 season with 75 points in 69 games, it didn’t matter. Bedard’s season caused constant comparisons to Celebrini and the monster season he was having. Including the fact that Celebrini made the Olympic team while Bedard was left off it.
And now with two significant shoulder injuries within a year of each other — the latest happening this summer, which will keep Bedard out at least one month into the 2026-27 season — questions around Bedard’s health are circulating.
All of this to say, while it’s tough to imagine Bedard demanding a max contract right now from the Blackhawks, he is still a franchise No. 1 centre with unlimited talent at just 20 years old.
In the most recent 32 Thoughts episode, which looks behind the scenes of Carlsson’s offer sheet with his agents, Matt and Ryan Keator, Matt revealed they looked at Bedard as a player comp.
“You know, at that point we had identified that we felt that the key comparable, you know, was Connor Bedard,” Matt told Friedman in an interview. “And we wanted to, our plan was to wait and see where he ended up, you know, in his negotiation and negotiate from there.”
We just saw Carlsson get an offer sheet for $18M AAV, so who’s to say the next one couldn’t be at the max 20 per cent of the cap?