The cost of signing William Nylander is sky-high, and it's only going up

Before the 2023-24 NHL season started, William Nylander was facing an uphill battle to earn an eight-figure contract.

If the Toronto Maple Leafs could lock up the star winger on a deal with a $10-million AAV today, that would be a steal for the organization. That's what starting the season on a 17-game point streak has done for Nylander.

Nylander isn't just on a heater either, he's demonstrating a level of play he'd never showcased before with an improved ability to get his shot off, a bigger role on the power play, and even a little bit of penalty-killing time as part of the biggest workload he's shouldered as an NHLer — averaging 19:44 of ice time per night.

He's probably not going to manage the 127 points he's currently on pace for, but he's likely to post career-high numbers across the board in 2023-24, even if he cools off a bit.

Before the season started there was some speculation that Sebastian Aho's extension ($9.75-million AAV over eight years) represented a theoretical ceiling for Nylander as the former was a top center on a team making deep playoff runs with similar offensive numbers to the Swede and more defensive value.

That idea has gone by the wayside in recent weeks as Nylander has positioned himself for the kind of offensive season that's probably out of reach for Aho — who has never topped 81 points.

Now the logical comparison points for Nylander are higher-profile stars with much heavier contracts. David Pastrňák is an interesting one because he also committed to the Boston Bruins in the midst of a career year by signing an eight-year, $90-million deal in March.

Pastrňák has more value than Nylander considering he signed the deal when he was a year younger, already had a Rocket Richard Trophy in his possession, and was on the way to coming second in Hart Trophy voting at the time with 42 goals and 80 points in 60 games. A campaign like Pastrňák's 2022-23 isn't firmly outside Nylander's range of outcomes this season, but it would be more or less a best-case scenario.

The timing is similar, though, with Pastrňák extending during a season that outstripped his previous career-highs by a significant margin and each player is an elite offensive winger. That makes the $11.25 million AAV the Bruins star is earning a worthwhile number to remember.

Another AAV to keep in mind is the $11.64 million Artemi Panarin earned in free agency prior to the 2019-20 season. Nylander isn't a UFA yet, but he's just a couple of months away from the open market and Panarin's contract with the New York Rangers came prior to his age-28 season — just like Nylander's next deal will.

The fact there were multiple teams bidding for Panarin helped drive up the price, although the winger reportedly turned down a deal with a $12 million AAV to land in New York. The UFA aspect, and the fact Panarin's deal was for seven years rather than eight, makes it tough to do an apples-to-apples comparison, but his deal coming four years ago helps bridge the gap.

It's also noteworthy that Panarin had never topped 87 points in a season when he signed on the dotted line, and Nylander is likely to cruise well past that number in 2023-24 — albeit in a more favorable offensive environment.

If you applied Panarin's cap percentage in the first year of his deal (14.3%) to the projected cap for 2024-25, you get a $12.5-million AAV for Nylander. That seems on the high side, but it wouldn't be completely ludicrous if the winger was able to sustain something like his current pace for a little longer. That doesn't mean such a deal would be advisable from a team-building perspective for Toronto, but it wouldn't be a crazy ask from the Nylander camp, particularly with the cap likely to grow.

From a Maple Leafs' internal salary structure perspective, there seems to be a relatively tight band that Nylander fits into.

He's not going to match the $13.25 million that Auston Matthews makes, but he has a good case to top the $11 million and $10.9 million John Tavares and Mitch Marner, respectively, are currently bringing in. Not only has he been more effective than either player by a significant margin in 2023-24, he also made so much less than the team's other top forwards for so long that coming in second behind Matthews in the salary department— if only for 2024-25 — seems not only logical, but potentially gratifying for Nylander.

Putting all of that information together, we're going to put a dart-throw for a fair Nylander extension at $11.65 million. The Swede doesn't have much of an argument that he's a better player than Pastrňák, but his contract would come a year later, meaning Nylander's projected cap percentage at the beginning of his extension on an $11.65-million AAV (13.3%) would fall below Pastrňák's at the beginning of his (13.5%).

That 13.3% number is almost precisely what Marner got on his first contract extension, which would be a nod to Nylander being a similarly-appreciated player by the Maple Leafs — and beating Panarin's AAV would be a feather in the cap of the winger's agent, even if the cap percentage was significantly lower.

An extension like that would make life difficult for the Maple Leafs in 2024-25 while the Tavares and Marner contracts remain on the books, but after one tough season the team would have the opportunity to re-jig it's salary structure a bit — either by letting their captain walk, or bringing him back on a more modest deal.

There are plenty of mitigating factors that could affect the number Nylander ultimately lands on. It's possible the Maple Leafs anchor what his extension would've cost prior to the season, and find increased demands unpalatable, driving him to free agency.

He could also perceive Matthews to have left something on the table and follow suit to some degree — although that seems unlikely coming off a deal where his AAV of $6.96 million was so much lower than the rest of Toronto's core. Nylander might also try to bet on himself by securing a shorter-term deal in the Matthews mold. Cashing in now for the largest possible contract, however, is probably the best play for a guy approaching 28, but it's not off the table.

There's plenty of uncertainty involved in the situation. When Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic recently polled NHL executives about Nylander's next deal, the range of AAVs they came up with was massive, stretching from $9 million to $12.25 million. For the reasons stated above, something on the higher end of that scale seems likely, but there's a lot that's still up in the air — including Nylander's ability to keep up his elite production in 2023-24.

Although there are plenty of moving parts to the Nylander contract, one thing we know for sure is that the price has gone up since the Maple Leafs opened their season just 44 days ago.