de liouncourt's maknae

First, the cap hit is listed as $18.8M because that is the average annual salary Mack will be making across all 5 years of his contract, accredited to the lower signing bonuses given in year 4 ($16,100,000) and year 5 ($13,500,000). Really taking advantage of the first A in AAV. Ex: if he had signed for an equal $20.8M across all 5 years, his contract would be for $104M instead of $94M... which is genuinely the salary cap for an entire team this season. Crazy.

If the cap hit/AAV of his contract had been $20.8M, any overages would have been needed to be formatted under a performance bonus, different than a signing bonus, which Mack is ineligible for — PBs can only be given to players on an ELC, players with 400+ games returning after injury on a 1yr contract, or players over 35 on a 1yr contract.

"But the cap hit is going up, so will the maximum salary." Correct! You're so right! However —

Per the NHL CBA, as @ofalltheworld sourced, Mack's contract maximum salary is set based on when he signed his contract, not the years the contract is in effect.

When Kirill Kaprizov signed his extension with the Wild in June of 2025, he signed for a base + bonuses combined $19.1M a year, because that was the maximum allowed under the $95.5M team salary cap at the time of his signing (the 2025-26 season) even though the cap is now up to $104M for the 26-27 season, when his contract kicks in.

Now, I'll say this with full disclosure, this is all uncharted waters as only one player in the NHL has ever signed for a 20% maximum AAV contract; Brad Richards in 2006 when he signed with the Lightning for $7.8M under the $39M team salary cap. No one else aside from Kaprizov has ever come close, until yesterday.

Now we wait and see how the dominos fall for everyone else.