- Nikita Kucherov can sign an extension now with one year left at $9.5 million
- Leon Draisaitl’s $14 million is the comparable that keeps coming up
- Read below for the Sept. 16 deadline that changes what Tampa can offer
Nikita Kucherov is owed a raise that nobody in Tampa is going to enjoy calculating.
The reigning Hart Trophy winner is eligible to extend right now, with one season left on the eight-year, $76 million contract he signed back in 2018. Sportsnet’s Michael Amato walked through why the Lightning can’t just write the check, and the number he lands on as a fair starting point is Leon Draisaitl’s $14 million.
Everything moved under Tampa’s feet this summer. Leo Carlsson’s offer sheet and Macklin Celebrini’s extension pushed the ceiling to roughly $18 million, and Connor Bedard landed at $15 million.
Kucherov has a real case that he is better than all three of them today. He put up 130 points in 76 games last season and led the league at 1.71 per game, becoming the 10th player in NHL history with more than one 130-point year.
Take a look at the season that earned him his second Hart:
Age is what complicates it. Carlsson, Celebrini and Bedard are all more than a decade younger and still climbing. Kucherov turns 34 during the first season of whatever he signs.
That’s why Amato points to Draisaitl, who turns 31 in October and sits at $14 million for another seven years. Kucherov has 86 more points than him over the past three seasons, so his side can ask for more than that and not sound greedy.
Term is the other headache, and there’s a hard date on it. Kucherov can still sign an eight-year extension up until Sept. 16. Once the new CBA takes over, the maximum for re-signing your own player drops to seven years.
Eight years would shave the cap hit down. It would also run to his age-41 season, and a $13 million or $14 million number on a 39-year-old winger is the kind of thing that buries a contender in year six.
Tampa does have the no-income-tax pitch, the one that got Brayden Point and Brandon Hagel signed below market. In this cap climate, that’s worth a small trim, not a discount.
The rest of the roster is already spoken for, and the Lightning’s own NHL 27 top five shows why they need Kucherov at the top of it. He sits at 97, three clear of Andrei Vasilevskiy at 94, with Victor Hedman at 91 and Jake Guentzel and Hagel tied at 90.
Lightning general manager Julien BriseBois was asked about the extension on July 1, the first day teams could talk terms with players entering the last year of a deal, and he made the club’s position clear.
“I’ll reiterate that we would like Nikita to stay here, he would like to stay here,” BriseBois said. “We’ve had chats. We’ll circle back to his representative, and when we have something to announce we’ll make an announcement.”
Money isn’t the obstacle. Tampa is projected to carry around $30 million in space into next offseason, which covers a raise this size without gutting anything.
The obstacle is picking a number that still works when Kucherov is 39. BriseBois has less than four weeks to decide whether eight years is the way to get there.
