What kind of salary should Mitch Marner command on his next deal?
That’s the question at the back of many minds in Toronto, especially as some already exorbitant price points have percolated to the forefront of the conversation.
Let’s start here: Marner is not a $14 million player. That’s a price point that, as of now, should be reserved for a top-five forward in the league. That’s evidenced by Leon Draisaitl signing for that exact figure just a few months ago, a deal that currently looks right on the money. Think McDavid, MacKinnon, Matthews, Kucherov, Draisaitl and Kaprizov — Marner is not at that level. He has never been at that level. He likely will not be at that level in the future.
That brings us to Matthews, with some whispers suggesting Marner could command as much as Toronto’s best player. Forget an internal cap — even after accounting for cap inflation and longer-term length, Marner isn’t worth over $13 million to begin with.
While it’s not unusual for initial numbers to start high, it’s still a bit baffling that either of those thoughts is already out there given Marner’s last contract negotiation (not to mention his playoff disappointments since). It’s hard not to say “here we go again.”
What’s the right number? Somewhere around $12.3 million, give or take how he plays going forward and what the right cap inflator is (a tricky estimation that complicates things). “Around $12 million” has been a fairly consistent valuation for Marner for a while now.
And that’s also “fair” value — not the kind of discount winning star players normally take (yes, that includes Matthews, whose fair value is north of $15 million).
Here’s how we got there.
As usual with questions of this nature, I turned to the model for a starting point. Figuring out what percentage of the cap a player is worth is the name of the game here and the model generally does a good job with creating a ballpark estimate. For Marner, that estimate starts with a 12.
For a long time, star players would get the short end of the stick in that regard relative to their worth, but we’ve seen a sea change of late. Deals for William Nylander, Elias Pettersson and Draisaitl all looked relatively on the money, potentially setting the table for a new era of big-money deals. That shouldn’t mean overpaying for a superstar, however.
Right now the model believes Marner is a true talent 100-point scorer, one whose offense is elite in its own right but does benefit from playing with Matthews. It also sees one of the best defensive forwards in the league, who thrives while playing some of the most difficult minutes. Marner is a two-way force, ranking above the 95th percentile in Offensive and Defensive Rating. With a plus-18 Net Rating, Marner grades out as one of the most valuable players in hockey — a top-15 skater who can be a game-changer at both ends of the ice. When Marner is on, he feels unstoppable. There should be no denying Marner is a franchise player.
The model estimates Marner to be worth 13.3 percent of the cap, or $12.3 million next season under a $92.5 million cap. That’s the start of the calculation, but not the end. From there it’s a matter of making the same estimation for every future year based on how Marner likely ages and how the salary cap grows.
By Year 8 of a potential deal, Marner’s on-ice value would likely drop to a plus-8.4 Net Rating — still first-line caliber, but no longer elite. That’s the risk that comes with a long-term deal for a 28-year-old, and that value would be worth 9.5 percent of the cap. By my estimation (and we’ll talk about inflation in a second) that would be worth around $11.3 million at that point. In between, his value peaks at just over $12.5 million, which leaves us with something like this: a projected average annual value of $12.3 million.
Not $14 million and not above Matthews’ $13.25 million.
Marner’s camp trying to net over $13 million on his next deal should be an absolute non-starter. He’s a great player and the cap is going up a lot, but that’s an ask that’s difficult to justify without much room left to the upside. Marner’s shaky playoff resume shouldn’t leave much appetite for an overpayment either.
Setting the price is one thing. The much harder thing is being willing to walk away from any demand above that fair price.
That’s something winning teams are able to do and something that seems to be a challenge for the Leafs from the outside. The Leafs are obviously a better team with Marner on it and he would be a substantial loss if it came to that — but paying him more than he’s worth would also be a substantial loss. It would limit roster flexibility, making it difficult to build a contender. The thing about “fair value” is that if a team pays every player fair value, it will end up being just average. The contending class rules the league partially because of its ability to compound surplus value across contracts.
No team does that better than Florida, and the fact the Panthers got an arguably comparable player at both ends of the ice for just $8.6 million speaks to that. Toronto can’t match that — not after giving Nylander $11.5 million — but the higher Marner lands above Nylander, the further behind the eight-ball the Leafs are compared to Florida.
Everything comes down to price and that means being willing to say “if you want $13 million, I’m sure Team That Never Wins would love to pay it.” There can be exceptions to the rule and every situation has a different context attached to it, but with a hard cap, price is king. In this case, that price should be under $12.5 million.
There is a wrinkle to all that which allows for some flexibility: cap inflation.
No one knows for sure where the salary cap will be by 2033 — or anywhere along the way. That’s especially true with the current cap being artificially low due to the pandemic and a CBA that ends in 2026. Reports in November from Elliotte Friedman suggesting an extra three-to-five percent jump may be in the cards for the 2025-26 season only complicates things further. As our Pierre LeBrun reported earlier this week, a bigger jump for next season looks to be a real possibility.
Part of the NHL’s update to owners today was the salary cap projection for next season. Owners were told that currently if based on normal CBA formula, it would be 5 percent increase. But that could be affected by upcoming CBA talks with NHLPA where a “phase-in” possibility…
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 10, 2024
My estimation for Marner is based on a cap figure that inflates five percent each season, the maximum allowed under the current CBA (unless both owners and players agree to a larger amount, which they might do next season). That would generally be considered an aggressive inflation estimation (I’m usually at 3.5 percent), but it’s probably on the safe side considering the league is playing catch-up with an artificially low cap.
Even that aggressive inflation forecast would not be enough to push Marner’s value to $13 million, let alone $14 million. To get to those figures, the average salary cap during Marner’s contract would need to be $115 to $125 million, up from the $110 million average that maximum inflation would currently allow.
An extra bump agreed to by the owners and players would help create such an environment on the low end to get Marner closer to $13 million, but anything north of Matthews’ deal would need multiple 10 percent bumps over the next eight years. And that’s if the league uses maximum inflation in every other season on top of those extra bumps, which is no guarantee either.
That’s simply not a bet the Leafs can or should make — not after losing that bet big the last time they had to sign their core pieces to long-term deals. That was just before the salary cap completely froze as a result of the pandemic, leaving the Leafs completely stuck for several years. The core players were worth the money, but the deals were designed to be relative bargains by the end thanks to cap growth that never happened.
Planning for growth makes sense, but that plan still needs to make sense and exhibit appropriate caution. Assuming the cap will go up by 10 percent in multiple seasons likely isn’t that — and if it doesn’t, justifying over $13 million for Marner becomes extremely difficult.
It’s already a difficult ask when core members of Toronto’s biggest division competition have all taken substantial pay cuts to build a championship roster. And for those calling that a no-stat-tax advantage that Toronto can’t compete with, I implore you to look at Seattle’s free agency playbook last summer — it’s not nearly the advantage it’s made out to be.
All of that comes before addressing the elephant in the room: Marner’s playoff performances.
If you have time, use it, and it may be in Toronto’s best interest to use all its time to see what version of Marner shows up this spring under a new coach. All the valuations used here are based on what Marner has done during the regular season, but the playoffs have unfortunately been a very different ballgame for him. A big-money player making $12 million per season needs to actually deliver when it matters and if Marner once again does not, even paying him fair market value would become hard to stomach for many Leafs fans.
There are a lot of considerations to make when it comes to Marner’s next deal, but the key point is he is not a Tier 1 blank-check superstar and the team cannot treat him as such.
Marner is one of the best players in the world, there is no question about that. He should be paid a lot of money for being a truly special talent. But the Leafs need to stay true to a price that makes sense toward their goals of being competitive, and that could mean drawing a hard line at a fair market value that falls well below the current gaudy numbers out there.
Most importantly, though, they need to see if Marner can still be one of the best players in the world when it actually matters. That, more than any price tag, will always be the sticking point.
