What new Leon Draisaitl contract means to the Oilers - 7 takeaways

5. Believe it or not, Draisaitl still left money on the table

In negotiations with a superstar, the team has no leverage at all and they know it. If the superstar wants to leave, there is nothing they can do about it if they can't trade him before the contract expires. Fortunately for the Oilers, in the case of Draisaitl he wanted to stay in Edmonton, and thus his agent negotiated in good faith with the team, prompting Bowman to do the same. At the same time, Draisaitl allegedly could've gotten another $3.7 million a season. The maximum player cap hit for this upcoming season is $17.6 million. Since his cap hit is $14 million, that means he left money on the table, to allow Bowman a little flexibility to help build a prime supporting cast, since hockey is a team sport after all.

The beauty of this is Draisaitl still gets to make a name for himself as the NHL's (temporarily) highest paid player, both on the Oilers and in the league, so he sets a new record in that regard. So, this deal is not only good for Draisaitl, but it's good for the Oilers. Bowman knows this just as well as Draisaitl.

Any idiot who says Draisaitl is overpaid - and there are always a few - should have their head examined to see if a brain is even present at all. He's one of the best, so you pay him like he's the best. Period. No Wayne Gretzky trade v 2.0 happening here.

6. The Oilers just extended their window to win

Losing Draisaitl would've been a huge blow to the Oilers forward corps. They probably would've had to replace him with either Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Adam Henrique, and while both are fine players, neither is as electric as the Deutschland Dangler. By doing this deal the Oilers ensure their top six forwards are an unstoppable train for many years to come. Once he locks up Bouchard and McDavid in the next couple of seasons, Bowman will have a fantastic core that will keep the Oilers competitive for years to come. After that, he'll only have to be concerned with the Oilers' cap situation and doing what the GMs of Vegas and Toronto have been doing for years - wheeling and dealing to stay cap compliant. That might be salary dump style trades or simply trading for a cheaper player or swapping a veteran for a young player.

7. The contract will be a cap headache short-term, but a bargain at its mid-point

A good parallel for this would be the contracts of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in Pittsburgh. Malkin was drafted in 2004 while Crosby was drafted in 2005. When both players were due their big boy contracts after their ELCs were up, NHL salaries were in a much different place as the salary cap had just been instituted a few years earlier. Both guys signed what at the time were landmark deals of $8.7 million per season. The Pens won a few cups during both players' primes but still had to lose a good chunk of their supporting cast in exchange for cheaper players.

Bowman will have to do the same thing now with the Oilers. After McDavid and Bouchard re-up for big $$ - and they will, guaranteed, especially after Draisaitl as the first domino has - some hard decisions will have to be made. Every cap team has had to do it. Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Vegas in recent years all had to say goodbye to certain players because they just couldn't fit them into the cap anymore.

That being said, after some short-term pain, this contract will begin to look like a bargain as the NHL's salary cap has just this past season recovered from the whole escrow deal the NHLPA made with the NHL prior to the pandemic.

So, the silver lining in this is with the Oilers locking up their core players at the same rates for years on end, it will give them more cap space to surround the core with great support, as the cap ceiling is going to up by $4-5 million per season at least for the foreseeable future. Until then they're going to have to do what every successful team has had to do. In other words, make some hard decisions and make sure that those guys' replacements are able to replicate their predecessors' success for the sake of the team. Just like Crosby and Malkin's current cap hits look like a bargain in today's NHL.

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