Cale Makar signed the richest contract in NHL history this week, and he did it with three weeks to spare before a rule change that means no player who comes after him can get the same deal.
The Calgary-born defenceman and the Colorado Avalanche agreed Aug. 27 to an eight-year extension worth $163.2 million US, carrying an average annual value of $20.4 million, the highest AAV in league history, according to CBC Sports and the NHL. The deal takes effect for the 2027-28 season and runs through 2034-35, making the 27-year-old Makar the first player in league history to clear $20 million a season.
What most coverage of the signing has left out is why the Avalanche moved now, with two years still left on Makar’s existing contract. The answer is a deadline written into the NHL’s next collective bargaining agreement. A second memorandum of understanding between the league and the players’ association extends the existing CBA framework through Sept. 15, 2030, but a set of contract-term changes inside that extension takes effect the very next day. Starting Sept. 16, 2026, the maximum length of a contract a team can offer its own player drops from eight years to seven; for a free agent signing elsewhere, the ceiling falls from seven years to six. The same date brings new limits on how deals can be structured: signing bonuses are capped at 60 per cent of a contract’s total value, and teams lose the flexibility to load early seasons with money, under a new rule limiting the swing between a contract’s first-year pay and its highest-paid season. Makar’s deal, done in the final weeks of the old rules, is built on structuring room that disappears in less than two weeks.
That timing puts Makar at the head of a very specific list. His contract is the fourth time the NHL’s benchmark for average annual value has been broken in 11 months, and the third time this summer alone. Minnesota Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov set the previous mark in September 2025 at $17 million a season over eight years. Anaheim’s Leo Carlsson pushed it to $18 million in July. San Jose’s Macklin Celebrini raised it again to $18.8 million barely a month before Makar’s deal was announced. Makar is the only defenceman among the four, and the only one of the group to sign before the CBA’s term-length rules changed.
That last detail is what makes the deal worth watching beyond hockey circles in Calgary and Denver. Two of the league’s biggest remaining pending contracts belong to Canadian franchises: Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Toronto’s Auston Matthews both become extension-eligible next off-season, and industry analysts expect either could clear Makar’s $20.4-million AAV when they sign. But neither will be negotiating under the rules Makar just used. Whatever number McDavid or Matthews eventually sign for, the term attached to it will max out at seven years with their own club, one year shorter than what Colorado just locked in, a gap that will show up in total contract value and in how each team manages its salary-cap runway for the rest of the decade. Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes, since traded to Minnesota, is also expected to reset the defenceman market again before long, this time entirely inside the new term limits.
For a league that has broken its own pay record three times since June, the number attached to Makar’s deal will not stand for long. The eight-year term attached to it might, for a while. Sept. 16 saw to that.
Via CBC Sports. Sourcing: contract terms corroborated across CBC Sports, NHL.com, TSN, ESPN and Yahoo Sports. CBA term-length and signing-bonus-cap changes corroborated across Puckpedia’s MOU coverage and ESPN’s CBA explainer. “Fourth landmark deal in 11 months” framing and comparison figures sourced from Yahoo Sports/Front Office Sports.
