Analyst provides insight on what Auston Matthews' next contract will look like
With much of the focus for the Leafs this summer being on Auston Matthews and whether or not he'll sign his extension on July 1st when he becomes eligible, naturally, the next question becomes, when he does sign, what will the term and cap hit look like? There's no question that Matthews is about to become the highest paid player in hockey, but just how high above Nathan MacKinnon's $12.6M does he go - and how many years will he and the Leafs agree upon?
There has been a ton of speculation in recent months that Matthews could be seeking as much as $15M per season on his next deal. While he would likely get that on the open market, if he does plan to stay in Toronto, there's a strong possibility that $15M won't even be on the table without a full 8-year commitment and, even then, $15M might be a bit too steep.
On Thursday evening, during an appearance on TSN1050's OverDrive, popular analyst and former NHLer Mike Johnson gave his predictions for the Auston Matthews extension in Toronto. Leafs Nation won't want to hear this, the term prediction was significantly less than 8 years and the AAV prediction was significantly higher than $12.6M. Johnson revealed that he believes Matthews will seek either a 3-year deal at $13.34M per season (approximately $40M) or a 5-year deal at $13.5M per season ($67.5M).
Obviously, this would be less than ideal for a number of reasons, but he fact of the matter is that with Kyle Dubas walking Matthews straight to his first eligible UFA year, he gave Matthews all of the leverage. Perhaps this was all by design, as Dubas' deal ended the same summer where Matthews became eligible to negotiate a new deal. Is it possible that Dubas timed it out this way to give himself more negotiating power believing that there was no way the Leafs would let him go with Matthews coming due? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it doesn't matter now.
Johnson believes that Matthews would prefer his next deal to be as short on term as possible to bridge the gap until the salary cap goes up exponentially in a couple of years. Then, when the cap is higher, Matthews' cap percentage will make him a lot more money. In addition, by signing for 3-5 years now, it will leave Matthews open to sign 8 years on what could be the final contract of his NHL career and for big, big money.
| POLL | ||
JUIN 9 | 439 ANSWERS Analyst provides insight on what Auston Matthews' next contract will look like Do you think Matthews will sign for longer than 5 years? | ||
| No, it will be 5 years or less | 277 | 63.1 % |
| Yes, it will be 6 years or more | 47 | 10.7 % |
| He's going the full 8 years | 30 | 6.8 % |
| He's not re-signing in Toronto | 85 | 19.4 % |
| List of polls | ||
