October 6, 2025 by Ryan Lotsberg

The wait is over for Edmonton Oilers fans. The announcement everyone in Oil Country has been anxiously waiting for was made on Monday. Connor McDavid has signed a two-year deal with an average annual value of $12.5 million with the Oilers. Yes, you read that AAV correctly.

THE CAPTAIN 🫡

The #Oilers have signed forward Connor McDavid to a two-year contract extension with an AAV of $12.5 million! pic.twitter.com/UYpGe4NKkx

— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) October 6, 2025

McDavid has 1,082 points in 712 games with the Oilers in his ten-year NHL career to date. The 2015 first overall pick has won five Art Ross Trophies, four Ted Linday Awards, three Hart Memorial Trophies, one Rocket Richard trophy, and one Conn Smythe trophy. 

Related: 1000 points for McDavid: “Legendary”

The Newmarket, Ontario native doesn’t just dominate in the regular season. McDavid has 150 points in 96 playoff games. He has 128 points in the playoffs since 2022, which is fourteen more than any other player in that time frame. His 34 assists in the 2024 playoffs are the most ever in a single playoff season, and he’s the only player to have back-to-back games with four or more points in a Stanley Cup Final (2024). McDavid won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2024 even though the Oilers didn’t win the Stanley Cup.

McDavid is simply the best player on the planet. He’s pure electricity on skates. His blazing speed, his lightning quick hands, and his incredible awareness and creativity consistently bring people out of their seats. Even on his quietest shifts, he does something that normal people can’t fathom being able to do.

The fortunes of the Oilers franchise did a complete 180 degree turn when the Oilers won the draft lottery in 2015. Since then, McDavid has become the face of the franchise and of the league. It took a little while longer to get the ship going the right direction than we expected, but they have gone from the sewer to having reached back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals over McDavid’s career thus far. He was the youngest player to become an NHL captain (19 years, 266 days) when he was named captain on October 5, 2016, and he has evolved into a widely respected leader. He had a lot of help along the way, but he has done most of the heavy lifting in carrying the Oilers to where they are now. That heavy lifting is going to continue over the next three seasons.

He has one year left on his current deal, and he didn’t take a raise on the two-year extension that he just signed. Think about that for a second. The Oilers were willing to slide a blank check across the table and let McDavid put whatever number he wanted on it, and he didn’t even take a raise over his current AAV. McDavid has said that winning a Stanley Cup is the most important thing to him, and he said that he wants to win in Edmonton. His staying at $12.5 million through the 2027-28 season backs his words up.

Related: Deep Dive: McDavid’s Contract Options

The cap is expected to rise to $113 million for the 2027-28 season, which is the last season of McDavid’s contract. None of the $17.5 million jump in cap space needs to be used on McDavid because he fits under the $95.5 million cap right now. The Oilers are now in a much better position to build a team around McDavid and Leon Draisaitl that will be competitive for the long haul than they would have been if McDavid had signed at a larger cap hit.

These are the players that are signed beyond the term of McDavid’s contract extension according to PuckPedia:

That’s it. The Oilers will have $41,825,000 to round out the roster for the final year of McDavid’s deal. That money will need to be used wisely. Former Oilers GM Ken Holland’s modus operandi was to get as much experience on the roster as he could to boost the odds of winning. The result of that was a depleted prospect pool and a total lack of young players contributing to winning now. The other fallout of that (and from that regime’s brutal drafting and development) is that no internal players from Holland’s era will contribute to winning over the course of McDavid’s new contract and beyond.

The thing that’s different now versus when Holland came on is that the core group has the experience of multiple deep playoff runs, including two Stanley Cup Finals. Experience matters, but the most important thing is having the best players on the roster regardless of age. Current GM Stan Bowman has the challenge of wisely utilizing that $41,825,000 on players that can help the Oilers win the Stanley Cup within the next three years and be in position to give that winning roster some longevity to make signing another deal in Edmonton more enticing to McDavid.

Related: Deep Dive: What’s the holdup for McDavid’s contract decision?

That means taking chances on young players like Matt Savoie and Ike Howard, and it means taking some swings on players like Alec Regula, who was claimed on waivers last season. It also means trading draft picks to acquire players in their prime years like he did with Jake Walman last season if draft picks are going to be traded.

It also means that the organization needs to improve at drafting and development. The Oilers have brought in Rick Pracey to run the amateur scouting department, and Kalle Larsson was brought in to oversee a new player development department. It’s something that the Oilers are aware needs to improve and they have made changes to address that issue.

Most drafted players take a few years to develop into NHLers. The pressure is on the organization to develop players drafted in the last two years into players that can contribute in the NHL by the time McDavid’s next contract expires.

We also have to remember that we don’t know what the salary cap will be after McDavid’s new contract expires. Bowman would be wise to leave some of that $113 million open so that they will be able to absorb McDavid’s next contract extension more easily.

McDavid wanted to find a solution that worked for both sides with this extension. His not taking a pay raise for the next three seasons is the team-friendly aspect of this deal. The two-year term is the player-friendly aspect of it.

Players know that the rising salary cap means that salaries will increase as well. Anyone signing a contract in 2027 or 2028 is set to get a HUGE payday. The reason that Kirill Kaprizov’s AAV ($17M) was so high on his eight-year contract with the Minnesota Wild was because the rising salary cap needed to be accounted for. Kaprizov wasn’t going to accept not cashing in on the rising cap. That meant that the Wild had to pay an amount that will hurt for the first year or two of the contract, but will be an appropriate value thereafter.

The Oilers’ cap situation is tight, so paying extra for an eight-year contract right now would have significantly impacted the team’s ability to construct a winning roster over the next three seasons as the cap rises. The Oilers just made back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals, and McDavid is squarely in the middle of the prime of his career, so neither side likely wanted to do something that would hurt the team’s ability to win now. A short-term deal now will help the Oilers get through the next three years with some cap flexibility; but McDavid will ultimately get his bag on his next contract (unless he decides to take another discount because he has proven that’s who he is on his last two contracts now).

It’s a big day for the Oilers. Keeping McDavid around for two more years is huge for the Oilers and the city of Edmonton. Oilers fans likely wanted to see him locked up for the long haul, but the two-year deal in this case doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to be here long-term. It’s the strategy that worked the best for both sides with the goals of winning now and making sure the player gets paid what he wants to get paid. McDavid could’ve taken $16 million on a two-year, and it still would’ve been viewed as a team-friendly deal. McDavid not taking a raise shows you the person that he is and how much he wants to win.