A month ago, Juan Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million contract for the New York Mets, which tracks to be the largest contract in professional sports history. Many fans and journalists have raised serious questions about this mammoth deal. Is he worth the money now, at 26 years old? Will he be worth the money in 15 years, when he is 41 years old? But the truth is that in a league without a salary cap, the move does little to handicap the Mets down the line. Mets owner Steve Cohen is worth $21.3 billion and has demonstrated a propensity to spend big on his players. Even if the deal is a bust, Cohen will simply cut his loss and move on to the next player. In short, regardless of how Soto performs, the Mets will be generally fine long-term.*
The NHL, a league which has a salary cap, is markedly different. Every dollar matters, and one bad contract that drags on for several years can seriously handicap a team from becoming a serious contender. The salary cap for the 2024-25 season is $88 million, and it is imperative that teams spend the money wisely to set their franchise up for both short-term and long-term success. This article will investigate the NHL’s worst contracts, putting together a starting lineup of three forwards, two defensemen, and one goalie.
Parameters
I did not employ any type of statistical model to create this team of the NHL’s worst contracts. However, I tried to take into consideration multiple factors when defining what a bad contract is. The obvious factors are the total monetary value of the contract and its length, balanced against the player’s expected future performance. But in addition to this, I considered the team’s situation. Marc-Édouard Vlasic is a good example; while his $7 million contract over the next two years is atrocious value for a below-average third pair defender, the Sharks are a rebuilding team that is not expected to compete for another few years. That type of contract on a team that is contending for a Stanley Cup would be graded significantly worse.
Note: When I say a quantity of year, that includes the 2024-25 season. For example, if I list a contract as 2 years long that means that it expires in the 2025-26 season.
The Team of the NHL’s Worst Contracts
Forward Group
Jonathan Huberdeau, $10.5 million X 7 years
The Calgary Flames had big expectations for Huberdeau after acquiring him in 2023, shipping off Matthew Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers in exchange for Huberdeau, MacKenzie Weegar, and several prospects. Huberdeau had been above a point-per-game player in each of his last five seasons with the Panthers, capped off by a 115-point performance in the 2021-22 season. While Huberdeau has never been the flashiest skater or the most consistent driver of puck possession, his exceptional passing and stickhandling ability were always enough for him to be one of the top point scorers in the league.
Unfortunately for the Flames, Huberdeau’s performance thus far has been an unmitigated disaster. His stunning drop-off in offensive production is difficult to account for. His inaugural season in Calgary saw him produce 15 goals and 55 points in 79 games. He followed that up with his most recent season of 12 goals and 52 points in 81 games, accompanied by a career-worst -29 rating. For comparison, he put up 8 points fewer in the last two years than in his last single season in Florida. While this season he has experienced a slight increase in production (45 games, 18 goals, 14 assists, 32 points), he is still producing far below his salary expectations.
His decline is perplexing given how steep it has been and the lack of any discernible injuries. One of the most striking changes has been his declining shot total, which decreased over 43% from his 2021-22 season in Florida compared to his first season in Calgary, a change magnified by several egregious overpasses in which Huberdeau had the puck all alone in the slot and chose to pass rather than shoot.
Regardless of the reason, Huberdeau is currently the 13th highest paid player in the NHL for the 2024-25 season. He has accumulated a large enough sample size in Calgary to suggest that he will likely never return to the 100 point player he was in Florida, and at age 31 it is hard to imagine him getting better from here.
For a Calgary team that is not quite rebuilding but also not a serious Stanley Cup contender, paying a middle-six producer such a high percentage of their allotted salary cap for the next seven years significantly limits their ability to either begin a serious rebuild or load up to be a cup contender. Last year the Flames paid $201,923 for each Huberdeau point. If that production continues for the next seven years, Huberdeau’s contract will go down as not just one of the NHL’s worst contracts currently, but one of the NHL’s worst contracts in history.
Sean Couturier, $7.75 million X 6 years
Couturier simply has not been the same player he was after undergoing back surgery that caused him to miss the entirety of the 2021-22 season. While he still provides value on the defensive end and in the leadership department, his offensive production has plummeted. In the 2023-24 season he played 74 games and accumulated 11 goals, 27 assists, and 38 points, and thus far in 2024-25 he has 8 goals, 15 assists and 23 points in 45 games. $7.75 million players should be at or just under the PPG threshold, and Couturier has been nowhere near that level since the 2020-21 season.
However, the salient reason why this is one of the NHL’s worst contracts is the contract’s length. His contract expires in the 2029-30 season, at which point Couturier will be 37 years old. For a player that has had serious injuries to his back, knee, and shoulder, and who is already experiencing a drop in production at age 32, it is a genuine concern to think where his play will be when he is 37.
Tyler Seguin, $9.85 million X 3 years
Tyler Seguin got off to one of the best starts of his career this season, recording 20 points in his first 19 games this season. Unfortunately, he has been out of action since then after getting hip surgery, an injury that will keep him out for another few months at the minimum.
There are a lot of elements that make this one of the NHL’s worst contracts. For one, Seguin is an oft injured 32 year old coming off a serious hip injury, so there are legitimate durability concerns. Another issue is that despite Seguin’s hot start to this season, he has dropped a level offensively in the last three seasons. Since 2021-22 Seguin has 171 points in 244 games, good for 0.7 PPG. While this is not bad, it is not nearly enough to justify $9.85 million. For reference, some of the other players making between $9 and $10 million this season include Nikita Kucherov, Cale Makar, Mikko Rantanen, Brayden Point and Matthew Tkachuk. These are cornerstone players that carry a significant portion of the offensive load, whereas Seguin slots in as a solid middle-six forward on a contending team.
This leads into the last worrying portion of the contract, which is the fact that the Dallas Stars are one of only a handful of teams that are legitimate Stanley Cup contenders. Dallas really struggled to score in their Conference Finals loss to Edmonton, potting 14 goals in the 6 game series and just 4 in their final 3 games, all of which were losses. If Seguin’s $9.85 million had been divided differently, it may have been enough to put the Stars over the hump in that series.
The saving grace here is that the contract expires in the 2026-27 season. The Stars have a good mix of young talent and experienced older players on their roster, and as a result their window to win will likely still be open by the time Seguin’s contract expires.
Honorable Mention: Logan Couture: $8 million X 3 years
Defensemen
Darnell Nurse, $9.25 million X 6 years
Picking the worst forward contracts in the NHL was a relatively difficult endeavor, as there were several contenders that could have been included. Picking the worst defensemen contracts, however, was far easier, as the two options listed here have far and away the worst contracts among defensemen.
Darnell Nurse’s contract contains just about every element of a bad NHL contract. First, he is grossly overpaid for his level of production. He is average offensively, consistently checking in as a 30–40 point scorer throughout his career. His career high in points came in 2022-23 when he had 43. Nurse’s best season in terms of offensive efficiency was during 2020-21, when he had 16 goals and 20 assists for 36 points in 56 games, but his numbers have consistently dropped since then. His TOI has dropped significantly in recent years as well, from 25:37 in 2020-21 to just 21:38 thus far in the 2024-25 season.
Additionally, his defensive numbers are average. He has a 49% Corsi this season for a team that has a 53.92% rating overall. Last season he had a 50% Corsi, while Edmonton as a whole had a 55.17% rating. He was a team-worst -9 during last year’s playoff run and was borderline unplayable at times, averaging just 18:50 during the 2024-25 playoffs. While he does provide some value with hits, blocks, and skating ability, his lack of defensive awareness has prevented him from ever being a true top-pair defenseman in the league.
Despite this, Nurse is the eight highest paid defenseman in the NHL, and will continue to make $9.25 million until 2029-30, when he will turn 35 years old. All this for one of the premier contending teams in the NHL in the Edmonton Oilers, who are squarely in their championship window and are perhaps just a few defensive pieces away from being overwhelming Cup favorites. Their forward group is lethal offensively, but their defense and goaltending remain a question mark. One could only imagine if the $9.25 million spent on Nurse was parceled out on two solid defenders, such as Gustav Forsling who just recently signed for $5.75 million through the 2027-28 season, whether the Oilers would have gotten over the hump against the Panthers this year.
Seth Jones, $9.5 million X 6 years
The numbers for Seth Jones are less detrimental towards being one of the NHL’s worst contracts than the fact that his contract does not expire until the 2029-30 season, when Jones will be 35 years old. The Chicago Blackhawks have no illusions about contending this season, but their plan is to be a more serious contender within the next 3-5 years. This is going to be difficult to do when 10.8% of their current salary cap is committed to an aging offensive defenseman who has struggled to produce much offense.
To be fair, it is difficult to properly analyze Jones’ numbers given that he is on such a bad team. Still, you would like your top defenseman to produce more than 37 and 31 points in each of the last two seasons respectively, and the combined -53 of those two seasons is an eyesore. The truth is that Jones is more of a number two or three defenseman on a top team, but he is in a situation where he is given number one defenseman minutes. None of this aligns with the fact that he is paid as one of the top six defensemen in the NHL, and as he falls on the opposite end of the aging curve it is hard to imagine his play improving much towards the end of this contract, even as the Blackhawks add more and more pieces around him.
Honorable Mention: Damon Severson, $6.3 million X 7 years
Goalies
Tristan Jarry, $5.375 million X 4 years ($4.225 million when in the AHL)
Jarry’s extension has been a nightmare ever since he signed it after the 2022-23 season, with the last year or so making him a clear pick to be one of the NHL’s worst contracts. He had a cumulative .903SV% and 2.91GAA last season, but his second half of the season was significantly worse than his first half. His struggles continued into the 2024-25 season to the point that the Penguins placed him on waivers. Jarry cleared waivers and has been assigned to the Penguin’s AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre. Through 22 games this season with the Penguins, Jarry had a .886SV%, 3.31GAA, and a -9.5 Goals Saved Above Expected, all numbers among the worst in the league.
The path for Jarry to even make it back to the NHL is now fairly difficult. Given that the Penguins are currently paying Jarry $4.225 million to play in the AHL, this contract is quite clearly the worst among goalies in the NHL.
Honorable Mention: Philipp Grubauer, $5.9 million X 3 years
Picture from Amy Irvin, The Hockey Writers
* Check out this article to read more about Juan Soto’s contract and the precedent it set for the MLB.
If you enjoyed this article, feel free to check out some of my other content: Cup Contenders rankings, a skill analysis of Nikita Kucherov, or Nathan MacKinnon’s speed tools.
