The St. Louis Blues have inked forward Jordan Kyrou to an eight-year contract extension with a cap … [+]
With a week to go before training camps open for the 2022-23 season, money is tight in the NHL. A $1 million-per-team increase in the league’s hard salary cap this summer hasn’t done much to alleviate the pressure, and some players are getting squeezed.
But even if general managers can’t hand out big contracts for the upcoming campaign, they’ve shown an unexpected willingness to lock up some of the breakout stars of 2021-22 with fat long-term extensions.
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The latest announcement came Tuesday, when St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong announced that he’d inked forward Jordan Kyrou to an eight-year pact. The detail will take effect in the 2023-24 season and carries a cap hit of $8.125 million per season.
Drafted in the second round by the Blues in 2016, Kyrou needed some time to adjust to the NHL. The first three years of his entry-level contract looked like this:
- 2018-19: 16 NHL games, 3 points
- 2019-20: 28 NHL games, 9 points
- 2020-21: 55 NHL games, 35 points
Off his potential from the shortened 2020-21 campaign, the Blues inked Kyrou to a two-year bridge contract with a cap hit of $2.8 million per season.
Then — everything clicked.
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Last season, Kyrou broke out with 27 goals and 48 assists for 75 points in 74 games — cementing his spot in the Blues’ top six. He’s now locked up at a star’s salary through his age-32 season — all of his prime hockey years.
The deal also keeps Kyrou in lockstep with promising Blues center Robert Thomas. One year younger, he was drafted 20th overall in 2017. Thomas made the jump straight to the NHL after his junior career was complete, and was progressing well until thumb and shoulder injuries slowed him down in the third year of his entry-level contract.
- 2018-19: 70 NHL games, 33 points
- 2019-20: 66 NHL games, 42 points
- 2020-21: 33 NHL games, 12 points
Kyrou and Thomas have different agents, who work for different agencies, but are on identical salary paths. As a restricted free agent without arbitration rights last summer, Kyrou signed his first two-year bridge deal, on Aug. 3. Thomas inked an identical contract seven weeks later, on Sept. 21.
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Then, he produced almost identical numbers: 20 goals and 77 points in 72 games in 2021-22. The two young forwards boosted the Blues’ core at a time where 34-year-old David Perron moved on to Detroit as an unrestricted free agent this summer, and where captain Ryan O’Reilly and sniper Vladimir Tarasenko will both have the option to test. free agency next July.
“They took two-year contracts with the understanding that if they did their job, we would do our job, and within a year, I realized they were doing their job, being top players on our team at 22 and 23,” Armstrong told of Jeremy Rutherford The Athletic. “That’s why the bridge deals are important for us, just to give us a little bit more information. You have to make that decision if you want to commit long-term.”
This summer, Thomas went first. He inked his eight-year extension on July 13, the first day he was eligible, at the same $8.125 million cap hit that Kyrou agreed to this week.
Thomas’s deal didn’t just help set the market for his teammate. It also kicked off an unusual pattern.
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The days are gone when NHL players earned their biggest contracts based on what they’d already accomplished, rather than what they’re going to do. But general managers have typically been reluctant to hand out bank-breaking long-term deals to young players unless they’re superstars like Connor McDavid. Even current Hart Trophy winner Auston Matthews settled for six years on his second contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs, as did top defenseman Cale Makar with the Colorado Avalanche.
Since the NHL’s 2022-23 business year began on July 13, just 12 contracts with terms of six years or more and average annual values above $6 million have been handed out. Eight of those 12 deals went to players who, like Kyrou and Thomas, are 25 or younger.
In Tampa Bay, where general manager Julien BriseBois and his predecessor Steve Yzerman built their Stanley Cup-winning rosters by making long-term commitments to keep their stars, Anthony Cirelli and Mikhail Sergachev became the latest players to receive eight-year extensions.
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The Ottawa Senators made eight-year commitments to 23-year-old Josh Norris and 21-year-old Tim Stutzle, who are both coming out of their entry level deals.
The Florida Panthers locked up 24-year-old Matthew Tkachuk for eight years as part of their sign-and-trade with the Calgary Flames, and Buffalo re-upped to the tune of $50 million over seven years with 24-year-old Tage. Thompson — on the strength of a 30-goal, 68-point campaign last season, after his previous career high had been 14 points in 38 games in 2020-21.
They’re calculated risks. But the general managers who are signing off on these deals are hoping that these players evolve into top-tier stars. If they do, in a few years’ time, their contracts will look as team-friendly as Nathan MacKinnon’s cap hit of $6.3 million for the upcoming campaign, when the 27-year-old will play out the final season of the seven-year deal that he signed after his entry-level contract expired in 2016.
In pre-pandemic times, general managers were accustomed to regular cap increases. But when the books needed re-balancing following significant COVID-19 related losses, the NHL and its NHL Players’ Association agreed to keep the salary cap at its 2019-20 level of $81.5 million for the next two seasons. That number has risen to $82.5 million for the 2022-23 campaign, but it’s a small comfort. And the league’s latest estimates suggest that future increases will remain at similar levels for at least another two seasons.
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Once the 50/50 revenue balance between players and owners is restored, large salary-cap increases are expected to come quite quickly. The general managers who committed to younger stars this summer are hoping that by the time that happens, their players will be at the top of their games — delivering big results at what, by then, will be bargain prices.
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