Cale Makar just became the NHL’s first $20 million man — and honestly, it’s about time.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are the writer’s own.
The Avalanche locked up their superstar defenseman with an eight-year, $163.2 million extension worth $20.4 million a year, blowing past the $18.8 million mark Macklin Celebrini had set just weeks earlier. Two Norris Trophies, a Conn Smythe, a Stanley Cup ring, and he’s still only 27. If anyone has earned a record-breaking payday, it’s him.
And it’s fun watching guys like Makar, Celebrini, and Leo Carlsson — all in their early-to-mid 20s — cash in like this. They’re the players dragging the league into a new era, and it’s good for hockey when the money finally starts to reflect that.
Cale Makar’s contract
But let’s not pretend this makes everything fair. Makar’s $20.4 million is unprecedented in the NHL — the richest deal the league has ever seen. In the NBA, it barely registers. According to HoopsHype, 91 NBA players will earn more than $20.4 million this coming season alone. Not ten. Not twenty. Ninety-one. Meanwhile, NHL players grind through an 82-game regular season and then a playoff gauntlet that might be the toughest in professional sports, four rounds of do-or-die hockey where guys play through injuries that would end a season anywhere else.
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And here’s the number that really shows how far behind the NHL has been: this single eight-year, $163.2 million contract is worth almost as much as Sidney Crosby has earned across his entire NHL career — a career dating back to 2005 that’s more than twice as long as Makar’s has been so far. This is a guy widely regarded as one of the greatest players ever, and it took him twenty years to earn what one contract will now hand a very good defenseman in eight. That’s not a knock on Makar’s deal — it’s proof of just how low the ceiling was for NHL stars for way too long.
Sure, the NBA and NFL operate with different revenue pools than the NHL, and that’s its own complicated conversation. But hockey players have been underpaid relative to what their sport demands for a long, long time. Makar’s contract is a great sign. It’s not close to the finish line.
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