The Tampa Bay Lightning continue to lock up their stars, this time inking Nikita Kucherov to an eight-year extension. The deal was announced by Kucherov’s agent Dan Milstein of Gold Star Hockey on Twitter. The team then officially released the signing, announcing that the deal comes with an average annual value of $9.5MM. Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press has the full breakdown:
- 2019-20: $1.0MM salary + $11.0MM signing bonus
- 2020-21: $4.0MM salary + $5.0MM signing bonus
- 2021-22: $3.5MM salary + $8.5MM signing bonus
- 2022-23: $4.0MM salary + $5.0MM signing bonus
- 2023-24: $5.0MM salary + $5.0MM signing bonus
- 2024-25: $5.0MM salary + $4.0MM signing bonus
- 2025-26: $5.0MM salary + $3.0MM signing bonus
- 2026-27: $4.0MM salary + $3.0MM signing bonus
Kucherov, 25, is heading into the final year of his current contract and was scheduled to become a restricted free agent for the final time next summer. Instead, he’ll stay with the Lightning at a price that lets the team retain the rest of their core. Though $9.5MM will make Kucherov the highest-paid player on the Tampa Bay roster, it doesn’t cripple their ability to add more talent going forward. In fact, Chris Johnston of Sportsnet and Joe Smith of The Athletic both tweet that a Kucherov extension does not take the team out of the running for Erik Karlsson who is expected to sign a massive long-term extension with whichever team acquires him from the Ottawa Senators. The Lightning would need to move money out, but the team always expected to sign Kucherov to an expensive extension.
In fact, Tampa Bay looks like they’re in fine shape even with their newest extension. The team currently projects to have around $14MM in cap space next summer without factoring in any increase in the ceiling, and have only Brayden Point left as a key restricted free agent. Several names on the blue line will be expiring, but with the new deal for Ryan McDonagh the team has solidified their blue line without even addressing the Karlsson situation. In the 2020 offseason, when Andrei Vasilevskiy and Mikhail Sergachev will be looking for big raises, Ryan Callahan’s $5.8MM contract will be coming off the books—provided it hasn’t already been traded away.
While handing out long-term extensions like this does put quite a bit of risk on the team’s shoulders, Kucherov is worth every ounce. The Russian winger has gotten off to a Hall of Fame-level start to his NHL career, scoring 334 points in 365 games including cracking 100 (exactly) in the 2017-18 season. An exceptional goal scorer and exquisite passer, Kucherov can create offense by himself or pair with Steven Stamkos as one of the most dynamic duos in the league. Not only does he have the ability to lead the league in scoring at any time, but he’s also received Selke votes twice as one of the league’s best defensive forwards. That’s not his calling card, but Kucherov is capable in nearly every facet of the game.
Kucherov only just turned 25 last month, meaning he’ll finish this extension at age-33. Even as he enters the middle of the deal and no longer provides excess value, the Lightning have players to pick up the slack. Despite trading two top prospects away for McDonagh at the deadline and not selecting in this year’s first round, Tampa Bay still has plenty of young names that will be graduating to the NHL in the coming seasons. Those players will become key if the Lightning and GM Steve Yzerman pursue Karlsson or any other big tickets, as they’ll have to move out some salary to make everyone fit. Fortunately for the club, other than Callahan there are few undesirable deals on the books for the Lightning. J.T. Miller, Tyler Johnson, Ondrej Palat and Alex Killorn all have their warts, but would likely all have suitors on the trade market if made available. That flexibility allows Yzerman to go after even bigger names, while retaining his homegrown stars for the prime of their careers.
Photo courtesy of USA today Sports Images
Well I hope the lightning don’t regret this eight year extension, when 8 yrs down the line kucherov is going to be 33-34 yrs old and he’s not what he is now.
I’m with you Becky Lynch. Although I guess a guy that’s still only 25 who puts up those sorts of under-the-radar goal scoring numbers is a decent candidate for a long-term deal. He also plays a decent two-way game and reportedly isn’t a lazy, irritable headcase like a lot of Russian NHL’ers get accused of being.
Kucherov gave them a steal
Forgot to mention that Gourde will need to be signed and he scored 65pts
Yet when the Hawks tried that with Hossa, Bettman was all over it and demanded the hawks restructure it and said they were trying to subvert the salary cap. Hypocritical twit that he is. Goodell Jr.
Doesnt the signing bonus count vs the cap. Or else every team would do this
Doesn’t really matter. It’s an attempt to front load the contract so it pays more at the beginning, than it does at the end when they will have to sign other players, and that is exactly what the Hawks were trying to do. They were tying to save money for later when they would have to re sign Kane and Toews. Which is exactly why the Hawks are stuck with a 5.75 million cap hit for Hossa, when it should be around 1 or 2 million. If Bettman says nothing, he’s a hypocrite.
The cap hit is spread evenly throughout the contract for an average annual value of 9.5. The signing bonus portion makes the contract makes the contract lockout proof. Even if there’s a lockout, he gets paid.
Cap hit is spread evenly based on the total contract value divided by the total number of years.
On top of that in each year that the team is paying the player more than his cap hit a cap recapture penalty accumulates. When the player is being paid less than his cap hit, that cap recapture penalty shrinks. This is done to prevent long contracts where the player is expected to retire years before the end of the contract.
An example of the cap recapture tax is Shea Weber and the Predators. During his time with Nashville Weber was paid $24M more than his cap hit for those same years. If Weber retires before then end of his contract Nashville’s salary cap will be reduced by $24M divided by the number of years left on Weber’s contract. If Weber retired today with (I think) 8 years left on his contract then the Nashville would have to account for an extra $3M a year in their salary cap for the next 8 years.
Hilariously this means that if Weber retired in the last year before his contract ends the Predators would basically have to gut their team to suddenly fit the entire $24M cap penalty into one year. I’d actually kind of like to see that happen, not because of any dislike for the Preds, but because it would be so ridiculous, and you just know the NHL would find a way to circumvent their own rules to keep this situation from being a disaster.
You need to learn a little more about how the salary cap works. Spouting off about something you clearly don’t understand is entertaining though.
Funny that a team can be this loaded and 75 percent of the league is allowed to opperate under this circumstances. How does half this dudes contact allow to not go against cap? Then you want to add in karlson? People want to talk about gsw ruining nba. Nhl is just a flawed with teams like the lightening and capitals. Sports are becoming predicatable and uninteresting…
The lightning didn’t make the playoffs two years ago, and all of his contract counts against the cap, I’m not sure why there are people here who think it doesn’t.
IT GOES AGAINST THE CAP! The only thing that this kind of contract does is make sure the player gets his coin if there is a work stoppage.
He got the Malkin deal.
More nice work for Stevie Y.
Lol Tavares’ contract is basically all signing bonus (his salary is never above $910k in any year) and nobody bats an eyelash. Kucherov’s contract is frontloaded for basically one year and everyone loses their mind over it being illegal.
For every single contract in the NHL the cap hit is the AAV of the deal. Doesn’t matter what the player’s salary or signing bonus is for that year, the only number that matters for the cap is the AAV. Its why teams tend to try and frontload deals since as the player ages and becomes less effective (and thus closer to the end of his deal) they become somewhat tradeable assets since the team acquiring the player is really only on the hook for his salary.