Ehlers is expected to test free agency, following a decade with the Winnipeg Jets.

• Player Overview
• What We Know
• Comparables
• Projection

Player Overview

Selected ninth overall in the 2014 NHL Draft, Nikolaj Ehlers has spent all 10 years of his NHL career with the Winnipeg Jets.

Following his rookie year, Ehlers ended up posting back-to-back seasons of 25+ goals and 60+ points, in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons. Over a seven-year contract with the Jets, he’s gone on to become one of the team’s top forwards. Across the last five seasons in particular, Ehlers has produced at an 82-game rate of 30 goals and 71 points.

Ehlers is a highly-skilled and dynamic forward, highlighted by a blend of speed and agility. The winger is able to carry the puck up the ice for quick entries and spin off opponents to look for a play, and has both great vision to spot teammates around the offensive zone, and a good release on his shot.

The one thing that could give teams some pause in going after Ehlers is his history of being unavailable for stretches of time. In the past four years, Ehlers has only hit the 70-game mark once, and he’s played in less than 80 percent of the Jets’ regular season games over that time.

Still, Ehlers will be one of the top free agents available this year. While Mitch Marner will be the top winger available, a lot of teams will strike out on trying to sign him, and Ehlers is the next best option available on the wing. As a result, he should be one of the most sought-after forwards this summer.

What We Know

• Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff stated the team intends to make a pitch to for Ehlers to be a “Jet for life.”
• Chris Johnston reported that while he hasn’t heard that Ehlers has made a 100% decision to head to free agency, he’s likely to hit the market and that it’s an “appealing possibility for him to go elsewhere.”

Comparables

Below, we examine what Ehlers’ deal could look like, based on previous contracts for other forwards. For more information on the stats/tables used below, including how the payment rate in projections is determined, visit the About the Site page. With Ehlers now 29 years old, the comparables used will generally be wingers who were near his age at the time of signing. Note: the age listed for each player in the table below is based on how old they were by Dec. 31 in the first year of their contract.

7/8 YEARS

The most likely scenario for Ehlers’ contract is a maximum-term deal, at either eight years in Winnipeg, or seven years elsewhere. While a slightly shorter deal could be possible, the standard for a forward of Ehlers’ age, experience, and production would likely set him up for a seven or eight-year deal instead.

A table of 23 comparables are below. The table uses a system of establishing a cost-per-points basis, using the middle ground between a player’s points-per-82 production over their signing year, and over their career. From there, a comparable player’s cap hit from the first year of their contract is applied to a $95.5M salary cap using the same percentage against the salary cap, and a payment rate can be established based on how much the player was paid compared to their production. Each contract can then project how much Ehlers can be expected to make, based on the same cost-per-points basis (highlighted on the far right of the table).

Aside from two outliers at the top of the table in Jeff Skinner and Patrick Kane, and one outlier at the bottom in Carter Verhaeghe, all 20 of the other comps listed would project that a seven/eight-year deal for Ehlers would come in between $7.8M on the low end, up to $11M on the high end.

On the low end though, we see quite a few players who either took a paycut to re-sign with their team (Landeskog) or signed in Florida, where state income tax wouldn’t be a factor and the player could take home a higher percentage of total dollars than elsewhere, even at a lower cap hit. As a result, we can expect Ehlers likely wouldn’t fall into this range.

Then with the contracts at the higher end of the table, the majority of them were signed prior to 2020, while the majority of deals lower down the table were signed more recently. So in terms of which would be most applicable, we’re likely looking at the deals a little lower down, that would project a deal below a $10M cap hit.

Some of the good comps that stand out would be Roope Hintz, Travis Konecny, and Matt Duchene, who all had fairly similar production to Ehlers, both over their signing year and career.

Hintz did have much less career experience at the time of signing, but had also spent a lot of time at center prior to signing (and has subsequently been used down the middle), which likely inflated his cap hit a little bit, given centers are typically paid at a bit of a premium. Meanwhile, the contracts for both Travis Konecny and Matt Duchene would project a deal for Ehlers to come in between $9.11M and $9.15M (though the center premium argument would also apply to Duchene).

At the same time, the contracts signed by Mikko Rantanen, David Pastrnak, and William Nylander would all project Ehlers to come in around a similar mark. While all of them were certainly higher-profile players with much better production, they’re also some of the more recent top wingers to sign contracts. All three would project Ehlers right around the $9M range as well (from the range of $8.97M to $9.1M).

So between the more comparable forwards from a production standpoint in Hintz, Konecny and Duchene, along with three of the more recent wingers to sign in Rantanen, Pastrnak and Nylander, there’s a strong argument that Ehlers could get around $9M in free agency.

Projection

Regardless of whether Ehlers re-signs in Winnipeg, or the more likely scenario where he hits free agency, we can expect him to get a maximum-term contract. Ehlers won’t be in the exact same situation as Mitch Marner, who is likely to have a ton of bidders willing to throw out massive money to sign him, but he’s arguably still the second-best UFA winger, and could earn a big deal as a result.

For a seven-year contract, Ehlers would be projected to earn $9M per year.

If Ehlers were to re-sign in Winnipeg, he could earn an eight-year deal instead. In this scenario, the Jets may be able to bring down the cap hit slightly, by offering more total dollars over the extra year.