Among a world where salaries are getting out of hand across all different sporting leagues around the globe, the NHL continues to be one of the only leagues left with a true winning culture, and this offseason in particular highlighted why team friendly deals are maintaining the league's reputation as league of winning mentality -- not a league based solely on the dollar amount.
In the last week or so, we have seen a number of team-friendly deals which again highlight how players in the NHL have this win-now mentality more than big eyes for cash, and despite the salaries being big, they definitely could have been a lot bigger. For example, Connor McDavid's two-year, $12.5 million AAV deal is a perfect example of wanting to win. Following Kirill Kaprizov's $17 million AAV deal in Minnesota, McDavid 100 percent could have gone out and demanded anywhere up to $20 million AAV, but the $12.5 million price tag shows us all we need to know about the desire of the some of the best players in the NHL.
The McDavid deal is the perfect example of teams and players having the mutual understanding of winning, and why at the end of the day, salary comes second. The McDavid deal not only shows his desires to win, but allowed the Oilers to go and hand out more great deals including Mattias Ekholm's three-year, $4 million AAV deal, a deal that was made possible due to McDavid's team-friendly cap hit. Also that led to Jake Walman, a guy who has been a massive player for the Oilers to be extended, again signing a very reasonable seven-year, $7 million AAV extension with the Oilers, all deals that highlight that they are there to win, and not to collect pay checks.
This offseason in particular highlighted more than ever that the winning culture is stronger than ever, and that was shown after both Jamie Benn and John Tavares took massive pay cuts in order to give their teams the best chance of winning, and their belief that the team's chances of chasing a cup is more important than personal salary.
Tavares, who was easily going to get anywhere in the range of $7 million to $9 million in free agency took a massive pay cut after signing a four-year, $4.3 million AAV deal with the Leafs, sticking to his hometown roots, and having full confidence in his team to win it all. Benn, who was coming off an eight year deal with the Stars was a much trickier situation. The Stars had little to no cap space, and losing a leader like Benn would be a big step back, that was before Benn took arguably one of the biggest pay cuts in NHL history, and signed a one-year, $1 million AAV contract, ensuring he could stay to keep the Stars dreams alive.
All these deals, and even more deals we haven't even mentioned show how team friendly and 'win-now' ' teams and players are becoming. Even with the cap space rising massively over the next few years, it is still great to see that the winning culture is still number one for NHL players, and it is great to see that in an era where big deals are easy to secure, is that players are sacrificing so much to keep their hopes alive, and maintain that historical winning culture.