Auston Matthews is the highest paid hockey player in the world

The Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL) broke the world record for the annual cost of a contract with a hockey player. Toronto has extended its deal with 25-year-old center Auston Matthews for four years. The contract provides that he will receive $13.25 million a year. This makes Matthews the highest paid player in the strongest hockey league in the world. He beat the former record holder, Nathan McKinnon, by almost $650,000. And Artemy Panarin, the only representative of Russia in the top 10 “rich men” in the NHL, broke away by more than $1.6 million.

Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League extended a four-year deal with his center, 2020 and 2021 Maurice Richard Trophy winner Auston Matthews.

In the 2020/21 season, he scored 41 goals, and the next he scored 60 and was recognized as the most valuable player of the regular season.

Notable in the contract that the striker signed (in 2016 he was selected by Toronto in the first round of the NHL Entry Draft under the first overall number) is his annual cost to Toronto. Matthews will receive $ 13.25 million per season, which is a record figure for the strongest hockey league in the world.

Note that if you rank the players by the total cost and length of their contracts, then the agreement between Toronto and Matthews does not look like something outstanding. Because there is Shea Webber, who, according to the Spotrac.com portal, should earn $ 110 million (the largest figure in the league) under a 14-year contract with the Montreal Canadiens, Sidney Crosby with an agreement he has for $ 104.4 million for 12 years, Colorado Avalanche player Nathan McKinnon ($100.8 million over eight years).

However, the contracts of the mentioned players, let’s say, are weighed down by factors that lubricate their real annual cost – the duration of the agreements and the uneven payments on them. For example: Sidney Crosby’s salary in the 2013/14 season was $12 million. Then it decreased, and in the last years of the contract, Crosby receives no more than $3 million per season.

With that in mind, the $13.25 million per season that Matthews has negotiated looks very solid. In terms of average salary, he noticeably, by $650,000, bypassed the same McKinnon, and Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid, who is in third place, by $750,000. In fourth place in terms of average annual salary in the NHL is the Russian forward of the Chicago Blackhawks Artemy Panarin (under a seven-year contract, he receives an average of $ 11.64 million a year). The most famous of the Russians playing in the NHL, Alexander Ovechkin does not even make it into the top 20 rankings – the captain of the Washington Capitals is in 23rd place ($ 9.5 million per year on a five-year contract).

It is worth noting, however, that the record salaries that NHL players achieve are still far behind the earnings of top players in other sports.

At the moment, the largest contract in the history of sports (we are talking about payments for the game, and not about income from advertising or other contracts, otherwise the Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo, who should bring about $200 million a year) remains an agreement signed in 2020 between Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs (American football). According to him, Mahomes will receive $ 503 million over ten years. On average, it turns out a little less than the leader of the club of the National Basketball Association (NBA) “Golden State Warriors” Stephen Curry. His average annual salary is about $53 million, the best in the league. However, Curry’s current contract is for only four years.

Alexander Petrov