The Hurricanes have made progress towards locking up star winger Sebastian Aho to a long-term deal, reports Chip Alexander of the Raleigh News and Observer. GM Don Waddell acknowledged that he’s hopeful a deal can be reached by the end of the season. If he’s unsigned at that point, he will become a restricted free agent this summer but will not have salary arbitration rights.
The 21-year-old is off to a prolific start to his year, setting a franchise record for a consecutive point streak to start a season while also equalling an NHL record for the most consecutive games with an assist to start a season. While negotiations have been ongoing since the start of the year, it’s reasonable to suspect that this has boosted the asking price as talks progress.
Waddell provided a little insight into the talks, noting that there are roughly 20 reasonably-comparable players to the winger. Aho and agent Gerry Johansson have three outliers on the high end of that scale while the team has three on the low end. The two sides are looking to find a middle ground between the remainder of those comparables with Waddell stating that “The amount of money we’re talking, there’s not a crazy difference”.
One of the outliers on Aho and Johansson’s end is believed to be Sabres center Jack Eichel who is in the first season of an eight-year, $80MM contract. Alexander notes that a deal like that is not on the table for Aho.
Some potential comparable players that aren’t on quite as expensive of a contract would include Winnipeg center Mark Scheifele, Colorado pivot Nathan MacKinnon, Calgary center Sean Monahan plus winger Johnny Gaudreau, and Boston winger David Pastrnak. All of those players are top-line options on their respective clubs and carry cap hits between $6.125MM and $6.75MM. With the Upper Limit increasing in recent years, the equivalent salary cap percentage could realistically stretch Aho’s next contract over the $7MM mark.
Carolina won’t have any issue fitting Aho’s next deal onto their books as they have just shy of $47MM committed to 13 players for next season, per CapFriendly. He’s one of their lowest-paid players this season with a base salary of just $925K (the entry-level maximum) but by this time one year from now, Aho will almost assuredly be the top-paid player on the Hurricanes, surpassing center Jordan Staal ($6MM) for that title.