Starting next season, David Pastrňák will be the sixth highest paid hockey player in the North American NHL. With net income, it ranks even higher. Yet there are voices that he is still underappreciated.
No Czech has shone in the NHL since the days of Jaromír Jágr like Pastrňák, who confirmed his supreme position this week with an eight-year mega-contract with the Boston Bruins for $90 million. That makes an average of 11.25 million a year.
Pastrňák will thus become the highest paid Czech in the history of the competition. He will surpass Jágr, who at the turn of the millennium signed a seven-year contract with Washington for 77 million (with an option to extend it by one year), so he earned 11 million annually.
Let’s just add that after two years he had to humble himself. As a result of the lockout, during which it was agreed, among other things, to introduce salary caps, he automatically lost about a quarter of his salary.
Pastrňák will improve to 11.25 million from 6.7 million and become the sixth highest earning player in the NHL.
Basically, it will be a total of three, because Boston from the state of Massachusetts is one of the league’s more tax-friendly destinations. From the gauge of 11.25, Pastrňák will have about 6.2 million left.
Only Connor McDavid will be better off with 6.5 million and Nathan MacKinnon, who is the only one in the competition to earn more than seven million net.
However, Pastrnak will leapfrog the Rangers’ Artemi Panarin, Toronto’s Auston Matthews and San Jose’s Erik Karlsson. Although they have a higher gross salary, none of them will earn more than 5.5 million due to higher taxes.
Pastrňák will have no competition in Boston. He will surpass the team’s highest-paid player, running back Charlie McAvoy, by $1.75 million. However, there is a consensus in the overseas media that Bruins general manager Don Sweeney definitely did not overdo it when he invested 90 million in the 26-year-old Czech.
“It sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not. Not for a hockey player of Pastrňák’s quality,” writes journalist Dom Luszczyszyn from The Athletic website, for example. They even think that the Czech striker gave the club a discount.
He bases his opinion on the fact that Pastrňák’s new contract is 13.64 percent of the current salary cap, which he says does not correspond to the level of one of the ten best players in the league.
Alexander Ovechkin once cut almost 19 percent from the maximum budget, which would be 15.6 million in today’s terms. Patrick Kane (15.2 percent), Dany Heatley (14.9), Artěmij Panarin (14.3) or Jarome Iginla (13.9) also occupied more space under the ceiling at the time of signing the life contract.
“With the exception of Ovechkin at the peak of his career, Pastrňak is a level higher than the aforementioned wingers,” Luszczyszyn thinks.
Therefore, he perceives the 90-million dollar mega-contract as a profitable investment and a “big win” for the Bruins. “Their best player will play below his price, although not to the same extent as before,” he adds.
Pastrňák’s wealth is also relative to that of Jágr, who “only” reached 11 million per year, but signed the relevant contract with Washington in October 2001.
In order for Pastrňák to live like the legendary 68-year-old at the time, he would have had to earn over 18 million dollars per season due to inflation. No hockey player in the salary cap era will reach for that much money for some time. Since their introduction less than 18 years ago, the highest paid player’s gauge has increased from 7.9 to 12.6 million.
