The hockey world was shocked on Monday afternoon when the best player of this generation signed a two-year extension with the Edmonton Oilers for a very hefty pay cut of $12.5 million AAV. Connor McDavid will continue to terrorize every team in the Western Conference, including the St. Louis Blues, for at least the next three seasons.
With that news, the Blues' chances of making it past their Central Division rivals remain the same. But if they have hopes and dreams of making it even further than that, and get a glimpse at the Stanley Cup, they now have to fight through a new-look Edmonton team.
McDavid is supplying a superteam in the making
The Los Angeles Dodgers are currently doing this tactic as we speak with the McDavid equivalent in Major League Baseball, Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700 million deal, with the first 10 seasons only holding a hit of $2 million. That means the Dodgers can go ahead and sign Mookie Betts and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to contracts that are both well over $300+ million.
This is the same deal with McDavid, as he freed up an estimated $5-7 million AAV over the next three seasons. Additionally, the NHL's salary cap is set to increase over the next two seasons from $95.5 million to $104 million and then $113.5 million.
Superteam is incoming in Edmonton.
The Blues have a rough go with Oilers already
Over the last 10 meetings between St. Louis and Edmonton, the Oilers hold a 6-2-2 record. They have been close matchups, with the Blues only losing the goal differential by 31-29. That is about to change, though.
The Oilers have a pedigree in their organization, with their long-standing history of winning Stanley Cups with legends. Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, and Paul Coffey highlight that list, but McDavid is on his way to potentially dethrone all of them. The Blues are going to have a very tough time trying to climb the Western Conference playoff bracket, and once they hit the finals before the Stanley Cup Finals, they are going to be facing a whole new beast.
This was the second-worst case scenario for the Blues, other than McDavid signing to Colorado or Dallas. It will be interesting to see what the Blues do in response to his hometown discount, with their own pending free agents of the future.