For the second straight year, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews is the NHL’s highest-paid player, due to rake in an estimated $20.2 million this season from his playing contract as well as his endorsements and other business endeavors. Coming off a $21.7 million haul in 2024-25, the 28-year-old center now has the only two $20 million seasons (unadjusted for inflation) in the 15-year history of Forbes’ NHL earnings list.

That Matthews stayed above the $20 million threshold—and that Colorado Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon fell just shy, landing at No. 2 among the NHL’s highest-paid players with $19.1 million—is a good sign for a league that is finally starting to see widespread wage growth again, after several years in which the salary cap was stagnant or climbed only incrementally.

And in what could be even better news—for everyone other than Matthews, anyway—his reign atop the earnings ranking is likely to be brief.

For starters, with Matthews’ on-ice pay scheduled to dip to $11.1 million in 2026-27, from $15.2 million this season, he will almost certainly be surpassed by Minnesota Wild left wing Kirill Kaprizov, who last week signed an eight-year, $136 million extension—an NHL record for total contract value. That deal’s average annual value of $17 million was also a league high in the salary-cap era, topping the $14 million mark that Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl established last year, and with the front-loaded structure of Kaprizov’s contract, he is set to receive $19.1 million in salary and bonuses next season when the new deal kicks in, according to the Athletic.

Many around the NHL had hoped that Kaprizov himself would be eclipsed by Draisaitl’s Oilers teammate Connor McDavid, a three-time Hart Trophy winner as league MVP who has been the NHL’s highest-paid player four times before, most recently in 2022-23. The 28-year-old center was entering the final season of an eight-year, $100 million contract he signed in 2017, and if he signed a new deal approaching $20 million annually as a free agent next summer, it could have reset the market for future negotiations around the league.

Instead, McDavid signed a modest two-year, $25 million extension with Edmonton on Monday, matching the average annual value of his expiring deal.

McDavid has consistently said his top priority is winning, and the new contract will give the aging Oilers more financial flexibility to build their roster around him. But the result is still a bit disappointing for those who hoped a generational talent could lift the lid on superstar salaries under a salary cap system that was established after the 2004-05 lockout.

In some ways, the NHL’s cap model is even more restrictive than the curbs in other leagues. For instance, no player can represent more than 20% of his team’s overall cap, whereas the NBA maximum is 35% and MLB and the NFL have no limits on individual salaries. And in practice, that ceiling for NHL players is moot: Draisaitl’s league-high $14 million cap hit this season is less than 15% of the $95.5 million salary cap.

At the same time, the NHL has experienced slower revenue growth than the other major North American sports leagues, the result of which is a salary cap that has grown 34% over the past decade, compared with a 121% increase in the NBA over the same span. So while Draisaitl’s $16.5 million in on-ice pay this season is an 18% improvement on the league leader ten years ago, the NBA leader is up 138%, and there are 107 basketball players who will outearn Draisaitl with their salaries and bonuses this season, according to contract database Spotrac—along with 144 players from the NFL and 85 from MLB.

But the league-wide outlook is........

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