Reaction to the Babcock hiring – Part 2: The hockey aspect
June 26, 2026
Realistic Oilers UFA Targets
July 1, 2026June 30, 2026 by Ryan Lotsberg
The NHL’s free agency period begins on Wednesday morning. There have been many examples of teams overpaying for players on July 1 and having it come back to haunt them. It’s something that teams need to be weary of, especially this year.
The salary cap is launching upwards at blistering speeds. The salary cap is rising by $8.5 million this season and by another $9.5 million next summer. It’s an 8.9% jump this year ($95.5 million to $104 million), and another 8.4% next year ($104 million to $113.5 million). In total, it will have increased by 18.9% over last season’s salary cap by the time the 2027-28 season rolls around. That doesn’t include the 8.5% jump from the $88 million salary cap in 2024-25 to $95.5 million last season.
That means that we need to get used to the idea of player values being higher than they once were. The cap going up doesn’t mean that every single contract should be viewed as a good contract though.
We’ve already seen some examples of sticker shock after seeing expensive contracts signed within the last year or so, including some recent ones that are set to begin next season. Whether the sticker shock is justified or not is up for debate on a case by case basis. I wanted to explore the numbers to determine what kinds of player raises are fair and which ones are out of hand.
We also have to account for future predictions about how high the salary cap will rise beyond the 2027-28 season. It will certainly rise, but it won’t rise 8-9% annually forever. The NHL is experiencing a salary cap spike after several years of it being nearly flat for a while. The NHL and the NHLPA have to mutually agree to raise the cap by more than 5% in a given season. These 8-9% jumps are not typical.
If we use 5% salary cap raises to predict expected salary caps from now until the 2030-31 season (which accounts for the next five seasons), we get these figures:
2028-29: $119 million
2029-30: $125 million
2030-31: $131 million
$131 million is a 37% increase over the $95.5 million salary cap for the 2025-26 season. I would posit that an increase of approximately 37% over a player’s current average annual value is approximately fair for a contract with up to a five year term being signed this summer. That doesn’t account for increased or decreased performance or future performance expectations.
That does not account for individual scenarios like Pavel Dorofeyev and his new contract worth $11 million AAV for the next seven years. His AAV on his last contract that just expired was $1.835 million. He signed that deal after putting up thirteen goals and 27 points in 47 games for the Vegas Golden Knights in 2023-24. Dorofeyev scored 35 and 37 goals respectively in his last two seasons to warrant his new contract.
Exactly three 35+ goal scorers from last season have AAVs higher than Dorofeyev’s $11 million. Dorofeyev is not the fourth best goal scorer in the league. Let’s look at it differently though. The average AAV of players that scored 35+ goals last season was $7,485,983. If I account for the rising salary cap by adding 37% to that figure, I get a fair average AAV of $10,255,797 for 35+ goals scorers five years from now. Dorofeyev’s $11 million AAV is more than that. He will outperform it if he can score a few more goals each season for the majority of the contract, which is possible for the 25-year old.
Brandt Clarke just signed a five-year deal with an AAV of $7.4 million coming off of his entry-level contract. Clarke finished his 22-year old season with 40 points. Clarke’s 40 points last season placed him twentieth in scoring among the 36 NHL defencemen whose AAVs are at least $7.4 million. That AAV already feels like a good deal for the Los Angeles Kings, and it will age like a fine wine.
Jack Drury’s new contract with the Nashville Predators is another one that seems like a decent bet. His previous contract was a two-year deal with an AAV of $1.725 million, which was 1.8% of the cap. His new contract is a five-year deal with an AAV of $4.5 million, which is 4.3% of the cap. It’s a 261% increase in AAV and a 239% increase in the percentage of Nashville’s available cap space.
Over the length of his three-year contract, Drury significantly increased his 5v5 point production. He had 20 5v5 points in year one, 14 in year two, and 23 last season. He signed his old contract coming off a season where he got just seven 5v5 points. Drury significantly increased his value over the length of his last contract, and he earned his significant raise. The 25-year old should be able to maintain this level of production or potentially increase it slightly over the term of his new contract, and he earned the raise with his play during his last contract.
Not all the new contracts that have been signed recently look as good as those three do though. I had sticker shock when I saw the contract that Michael Kesselring got with the San Jose Sharks after they acquired him last week. It’s a three-year deal with an AAV of $4.5 million. The 25-year old is coming off a contract with an AAV of $1.4 million. That’s a 322% raise. Last season, Kesselring’s $1.4 million took up 1.46% of the Buffalo Sabres’ cap. Next season, Kesselring’s $4.5 million will take up 4.33% of the Sharks’ cap. That works out to a 297% increase.
I simply don’t see what Kesselring did to earn that kind of raise. He had a nice season with the Utah Mammoth in year one of his latest contract where he recorded 29 points in 82 games. It was an increase over his 21 point season in 2023-24; but when you consider that he only played 65 games that year, it’s only a 2.5 point increase when his points pace is prorated over 82 games. Sure, offence isn’t everything for a defenceman. His five-on-five goals for percentage stayed essentially stagnant and his expected goals percentage rose by 4% from year one to year two. His usage against elite competition decreased by 1% according to PuckIQ, so his role didn’t change.
This past season, Kesselring only played in 34 games due to injury. He recorded two points. His usage against elite players jumped up to 30.9% from 26.1%, but that’s about all I can say for his season with the Sabres.
None of what I just wrote about Kesselring justifies the raise he just got, even with the rising cap. It’s only a three-year deal, which matters. My rudimentary cap projection for the 2028-29 season is $119 million, which is a 24.6% increase over last season’s salary cap. If we add 24.6% to Kesselring’s AAV, we get $1,744,400. If you want to add a little bit more for future production due to Kesselring being 25 years old or because you expect his role to increase significantly with the Sharks, then I would be okay with adding a bit more to that figure. $4.5 million seems excessive though. I think my sticker shock on that contract is valid.
The Sabres escaped Kesselring’s new contract, but they won’t come out of the 2026 free agency period unscathed. They just signed Beck Malenstyn to a six-year extension with an AAV of $2,916,667, which will be 2.8% of the cap. His previous contract was a two-year deal with an AAV of $1.35 million, which was 1.4% of the cap. That’s a 216% increase in AAV and a 200% increase in cap percentage. This is for a player that had ten and fourteen total points in the last two seasons. The 29-year old’s production didn’t double, so I’m not sure why his AAV and his cap percentage should have essentially both doubled. This contract isn’t quite as bad as the Trent Frederic contract, but it has a similar feel to it.
Related: Frederic extension is an overpay
Contracts like Kesselring’s and Malenstyn’s are the ones that teams have to be careful about signing. Those types of contracts won’t hurt teams that have loads of cap space available now, but they could become issues when trying to make significant improvements to their rosters down the road.
The contracts that Edmonton Oilers GM Stan Bowman just handed out to Connor Murphy (5 years, $4.1M AAV) and Jason Dickinson (5 years, $4M AAV) aren’t so bad in comparison to their previous deals. Murphy’s previous AAV was $4.4 million, and Dickinson’s was $4.25 million.
Normally a 33-year old signing a five-year deal would take a bit more of a pay cut than Murphy did, but $4.1 million for this player isn’t so bad given the current landscape. A slight decrease for Dickinson at 31-years old doesn’t seem too bad compared to his last deal, although my personal valuation of the player and what he brings does not come anywhere close to matching his previous contract nor his current contract. To be clear, I think Dickinson is overpaid because of what he brings to the table, not because of the new cap environment or because of what he made on his last contract.
Related: Dickinson’s new deal will be a problem for the Oilers
I don’t like signing players in their 30s to long-term deals because I don’t think it’s smart to buy a player’s declining years, especially when those players are currently near the end of their prime years. They feel they should get paid for prime level performance, and they have usually earned the right to have some security via term and trade protection. That security becomes a problem for the team when the player inevitably declines.
However, in the current rising cap landscape, locking veteran players up to these types of contracts doesn’t hurt quite as much because the AAVs are coming in at a lower percentage of the cap than they would have in the flat cap era. It’s not the ideal player acquisition strategy, but using this strategy now will hurt less than it ever has.
Obviously there are circumstances present for each individual player; but as a general rule of thumb, anywhere from a 25-37% raise in AAV for a given player on a three to five year term right now means the player is basically valued the same as he was before in this rising cap environment. If a team gives a player more of a raise than that, then it should be because he outperformed his previous AAV or the player is young enough for expected growth to be realistic. If the raise is less than that, it should be because the player’s performance has declined or the player is aging.
Having said all that, the take home message should be that we can’t just assume that all deals that get signed this week will be good deals because the cap is rising. Context matters in the judgment of these deals more than ever in this novel cap environment. Hopefully this information helps guide your opinions on Wednesday’s free agent signings around the league.
