Highest-Paid NHL Players: Ranked by Cap Hit (2025-26)

Leon Draisaitl is the NHL’s highest-paid player for 2025-26, carrying a $14 million cap hit on his Edmonton Oilers extension, with Auston Matthews ($13.25m) and Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6m) right behind him. That’s cap hit actually in effect this season — Kirill Kaprizov’s record-setting $17 million deal is bigger on paper, but it doesn’t start until 2026-27, which is the single most common mix-up on lists like this one. Below are the 12 highest verified cap hits in the league right now, each checked against NHL.com, ESPN, CBS Sports or PuckPedia’s contract database.

At a glance: the top 12 by cap hit

Rank	Player	Team	Cap hit (AAV)	Why they rank here
1	Leon Draisaitl	Edmonton Oilers	$14.0m	Highest cap hit actually in effect for 2025-26
2	Auston Matthews	Toronto Maple Leafs	$13.25m	Held the #1 spot until Draisaitl’s deal passed it
3	Nathan MacKinnon	Colorado Avalanche	$12.6m	Reigning Rocket Richard winner, 53 goals in 2025-26
4	Connor McDavid	Edmonton Oilers	$12.5m	Best player in the world, deliberately below-market
5	Mitch Marner	Vegas Golden Knights	$12.0m	Sign-and-traded from Toronto, 8-year deal to 2032-33
5	Mikko Rantanen	Dallas Stars	$12.0m	Landed via trade deadline blockbuster, then extended
7	Artemi Panarin	LA Kings	$11.64m	Rangers-era cap hit still active despite Feb. 2026 trade
8	Elias Pettersson	Vancouver Canucks	$11.6m	8-year, $92.8m extension locks in the Canucks’ center
9	Erik Karlsson	Pittsburgh Penguins	$11.5m	NHL’s highest-paid defenseman, 3x Norris winner
9	William Nylander	Toronto Maple Leafs	$11.5m	8-year, $92m extension signed January 2024
9	Igor Shesterkin	New York Rangers	$11.5m	Highest-paid goaltender in NHL history
12	David Pastrnak	Boston Bruins	$11.25m	8-year, $90m Bruins extension through 2030-31

How we ranked this list

This is cap hit — average annual value — actually counting against a team’s books for the 2025-26 season, sourced from NHL.com, ESPN, CBS Sports and PuckPedia’s contract database and cross-checked across at least two of them. That’s a deliberate choice: cap hit is one number, actual season salary is another, and a deal that’s signed but hasn’t started yet (like Kaprizov’s) isn’t a 2025-26 cap hit no matter how large it eventually gets. Ties are broken alphabetically. Any figure that couldn’t be confirmed against an authoritative source was left off rather than estimated.

1. Leon Draisaitl — $14.0 million

Draisaitl’s eight-year, $112 million extension with the Edmonton Oilers carries the highest cap hit actually in effect anywhere in the NHL this season. The deal is heavily bonus-loaded: his 2025-26 base salary is only around $1 million, with the rest paid as a signing bonus, which is standard practice for elite NHL contracts and part of why cap hit and take-home pay can look wildly different for the same player in the same year. Draisaitl has been a point-per-game center for most of a decade and shares Edmonton’s top line with Connor McDavid, giving the Oilers two of the league’s ten highest cap hits on one roster.

2. Auston Matthews — $13.25 million

Matthews signed a four-year, $53 million extension with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2023 that briefly made him the league’s highest-paid player by AAV before Draisaitl’s deal passed it. A four-time goal-scoring leader and former Hart Trophy winner, Matthews has anchored Toronto’s top line for his entire career and remains one of only a handful of NHL forwards to have topped 60 goals in a season. His shorter four-year term, rather than the eight-year deals common at the top of this list, keeps him closer to unrestricted free agency and future market resets.

3. Nathan MacKinnon — $12.6 million

MacKinnon’s eight-year, roughly $100.8 million extension with the Colorado Avalanche carries a $12.6 million cap hit. He backed it up in 2025-26 by leading the NHL with 53 goals in 80 games to capture his first career Rocket Richard Trophy, and he was a Hart Trophy finalist alongside McDavid and Nikita Kucherov. MacKinnon has been the engine of an Avalanche team built around one Stanley Cup championship and repeated deep playoff runs, and his cap hit has aged well relative to his production even years into the deal.

4. Connor McDavid — $12.5 million

McDavid is the clearest outlier on this list: widely regarded as the best player alive, his cap hit sits below four teammates and rivals above him here. His two-year, $25 million extension, signed in October 2025, was a deliberate short-term, below-market bet — it gives Edmonton cap flexibility to build around him now, and it lets McDavid reach free agency again in 2028, after the salary cap has already climbed toward $104 million, when his next deal will be negotiated against a far bigger ceiling.

5. Mitch Marner — $12.0 million

Marner left the Maple Leafs on July 1, 2025, in a sign-and-trade that sent him to the Vegas Golden Knights for forward Nicolas Roy, and signed an eight-year contract worth $12 million a season running through 2032-33. He arrives in Vegas as a proven 90-plus-point playmaker, giving the Golden Knights another true first-line option to pair with their existing core as they chase another Stanley Cup.

5. Mikko Rantanen — $12.0 million

Rantanen had one of the strangest routes to a nine-figure contract in recent NHL history: traded from Colorado to Carolina in January 2025, then flipped again to the Dallas Stars before that year’s trade deadline, before Dallas locked him up with an eight-year, $96 million extension at a $12 million cap hit. He helped drive the Stars deep into the 2025 playoffs after arriving, and the extension was Dallas’s bet that a rental-turned-cornerstone was worth the term.

7. Artemi Panarin — $11.64 million

Panarin’s number on this list is a snapshot of how trades and cap hits actually interact. He was dealt from the New York Rangers to the LA Kings on February 4, 2026, ending a seven-year run in New York, but his cap hit didn’t change with the jersey — mid-season trades carry a player’s existing AAV unless a team retains salary, so his original Rangers-era $11.64 million figure stays on the books through the rest of 2025-26. Panarin and the Kings have already agreed to a fresh two-year, $11 million AAV extension, but that deal doesn’t take effect until 2026-27.

8. Elias Pettersson — $11.6 million

Vancouver’s eight-year, $92.8 million extension for Pettersson carries an $11.6 million cap hit, making him the centerpiece the Canucks committed to long-term as their top-line center. The deal was signed to lock in a player who has already produced multiple 30-goal, 90-point seasons, betting that his prime years line up with the length of the contract.

9. Erik Karlsson — $11.5 million

Karlsson’s $11.5 million cap hit dates to the eight-year, $92 million deal he signed with San Jose in 2019, a number he carried with him when the Sharks traded him to Pittsburgh in a three-team deal in August 2023. He’s a three-time Norris Trophy winner — the first defenseman traded immediately after winning the award since Doug Harvey in 1961 — and remains the highest-paid blueliner in the NHL for 2025-26.

9. William Nylander — $11.5 million

Nylander signed an eight-year, $92 million extension with the Toronto Maple Leafs in January 2024, tying him for the ninth-highest cap hit in the league. He’s been a consistent 80-plus-point scorer on Toronto’s top two lines and, alongside Matthews, gives the Maple Leafs two of the NHL’s dozen highest cap hits on the same roster.

9. Igor Shesterkin — $11.5 million

Shesterkin’s eight-year, $92 million extension with the New York Rangers made him the highest-paid goaltender in NHL history when it was signed, and at $11.5 million he still holds that distinction for 2025-26. He won the Vezina Trophy as the league’s top goaltender in 2022 and has anchored the Rangers’ net through multiple deep playoff pushes since.

12. David Pastrnak — $11.25 million

Pastrnak’s eight-year, $90 million extension with the Boston Bruins, signed in March 2023, runs through the 2030-31 season at an $11.25 million cap hit. A perennial 40-goal scorer and one of the league’s most consistent offensive wingers, Pastrnak has been the centerpiece of Boston’s forward group through the Bruins’ post-Bergeron, post-Krejci rebuild around him.

The 2025-26 note: why this list is about to change

Three deals already signed will reorder this list without a single new contract being written. Kaprizov’s $17 million cap hit and Jack Eichel’s $13.5 million Vegas extension both begin in 2026-27, and Panarin’s $11 million Kings deal replaces his current number at the same time. All three kick in alongside the NHL’s salary cap jumping from $95.5 million to a scheduled $104 million, so the players who look shrewd for taking short or below-market deals now — McDavid chief among them — are positioned to negotiate their next contracts against a considerably bigger number. For context on how differently that works in leagues without a hard cap, see our breakdown of the highest-paid NFL players and guaranteed money and how richest NBA players build their money under a soft cap. For more on how the NHL’s cap system works day to day, see our NHL and hockey coverage hub.