Note to Edmonton Oilers: No player earning more than $10 million has ever won a Stanley Cup with a different team.
There have been many outstanding players in the NHL during the last 15 seasons, with several of them earning salaries over $10 million annually.
Despite the tremendous contributions these players have made to their teams, no NHL club with a player earning more than $10 million a season has won the Stanley Cup between 2005 and the present.
This information was brought up by my colleague Bruce McCurdy of Cult of Hockey in our most recent podcast on Edmonton’s contract talks with Leon Draisaitl and, soon, with Connor McDavid.
Despite the tremendous contributions these players have made to their teams, no NHL club with a player earning more than $10 million a season has won the Stanley Cup between 2005 and the present.
Three players have made $10 million or more on winning Stanley Cup teams in recent years: Jack Eichel in Vegas, Sergei Bobrovsky and Alexander Barkov in Florida, and Sergei Bobrovsky in Florida. However, no team has gone all the way with a player earning more than that.
In the NHL past season, fourteen players had cap hits over $10 million, with Auston Matthews earning the highest at $13.25 million. Mitch Marner ($0.9 million) and John Tavares ($11 million) were the other two players from Toronto in this group. However, Toronto was unable to win a single game during the playoffs once more.
Los Angeles Kings player Drew Doughty earned $11 million in 2018, which ranked ninth in the NHL. However, his Kings were eliminated in the opening round of the NHL playoffs once more.
In fact, the Kings have lost in the first round three times and failed to qualify for the playoffs twice since Doughty’s contract increased from $7 million to $11 million in the 2019–20 campaign.
In the 2015–16 season, Anze Kopitar—the second great Kings player—went from $6.8 million to $10 million annually. The Kings have two Stanley Cup victories in the four seasons preceding Kopitar’s pay increase. After Kopitar’s significant pay increase, they lost a set.
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