Cap Crimes: The Worst NHL Contracts of 2025-26

Every time a team can’t add a key piece at the deadline, can’t sign the defenseman they need, can’t make the move everyone knows they should make — there’s a contract buried somewhere in the roster killing the math. The 2025-26 salary cap sits at $95.5 million. Every dollar matters. Fifteen percent of your cap tied to one underperforming player isn’t bad luck — it’s a structural problem that can take years to escape.

These are the five contracts dragging teams down hardest this season.

Elias Pettersson, Vancouver Canucks — $11.6M AAV

The most baffling decline in recent memory. Elias Pettersson was a legitimate Hart Trophy candidate two years ago — elite possession numbers, 102 points in 2022-23, the kind of player you build a franchise around. Vancouver signed him to an eight-year, $11.6M AAV extension in March 2024. You can understand why. What happened next is harder to explain.

This season, Pettersson is producing at roughly 0.68 points per game. His team is controlling only 39.1% of goals-for at 5v5 when he’s on the ice. That is not a slump. That is a player who looks like a completely different version of himself from the one who signed the deal. The Canucks committed to him through his age-34 season. If this version of Pettersson shows up for most of it, that contract is going to age terribly.

The cap hit is eighth-highest among all NHL skaters. For a player who right now can’t be trusted in close games, that’s a problem with no short-term escape route.

Jonathan Huberdeau, Calgary Flames — $10.5M AAV

Three-plus seasons in Calgary, and Jonathan Huberdeau has never come close to the player who put up 115 points in 2021-22 with Florida. That season was one of the great offensive performances in recent NHL history. It was also, it turns out, the worst possible basis for a massive long-term contract.

Calgary signed Huberdeau to eight years at $10.5M per year through 2030-31. He earns more than Aleksander Barkov. More than Jack Eichel. He will be 37 years old when this contract finally ends. In a league where centers over 35 are increasingly liabilities, the Flames are locked into paying top-five money to a player who has delivered middle-six results ever since he arrived.

The relocation effect is real — the change from a Cup-winning environment to a rebuilding situation can flatten players psychologically and statistically. But three seasons is enough sample size. This isn’t an adjustment period anymore. This is who Huberdeau is in Calgary.

Sergei Bobrovsky, Florida Panthers — $10M AAV

Sergei Bobrovsky is 37 years old, posting a .876 save percentage, and earning $10 million. That works out to roughly $10,299 per save actually made. The Panthers are out of the playoff picture. “Big-Game Bob” — the legend built in back-to-back Cup runs — is a memory at this point.

The frustrating part about this contract is that it made sense when signed. Florida gave Bobrovsky a seven-year deal worth $70 million in 2019, betting on him anchoring a contention window. And for stretches it worked — his play in 2023 and 2024 was as good as anyone’s in the league. But here’s the problem with seven-year goalie contracts: goalies don’t age well. The peak is short and narrow. The cap hit doesn’t change.

Florida has effectively moved on, with Spencer Knight taking on a larger role. But $10M in structural cap weight is the price of the bet they made five years ago, and they’re paying it to the end.

Darnell Nurse, Edmonton Oilers — $9.25M AAV

The Oilers are in a permanent cap crunch, and half of it traces back to Darnell Nurse and his eight-year, $9.25M AAV deal — complete with a no-movement clause that makes him essentially untradeable and still carrying roughly five years to run.

When Edmonton signed Nurse after his breakout 2020-21 season, the expectation was a true No. 1 defender who could anchor the back end behind Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Instead, they got a high-minute player whose defensive partners rotate constantly, whose own underlying metrics have never matched his billing, and who occupies a massive portion of cap space that a team trying to win a Cup right now desperately needs elsewhere.

The Oilers have made it to a Cup Final with this deal on the books, so catastrophe is too strong a word. But every time Edmonton needs to make a move and can’t quite get the pieces to line up, Nurse’s cap hit is in the room. The cruel irony: by the time the contract expires, the cap ceiling will have climbed well past $110M. The damage is most acute right now, in the seasons that matter most.

Jordan Binnington, St. Louis Blues — $6M AAV

The lowest dollar figure on this list, but perhaps the most immediately damaging. Jordan Binnington is posting a .871 save percentage — worst among all regular NHL starters — with just 10 wins in 36 appearances this season. By goals saved above expected, he’s sitting at negative 11.2. The Blues are paying full starter money for a goaltender who is, by the numbers, actively costing them games.

The 2019 Cup hero earned his contract. That run through the playoffs was historic, and Binnington backed it up with legitimate regular season play in the years that followed. But the regression has been steep and sustained, and St. Louis is stuck with it.

At $6M on a $95.5M cap, it isn’t the raw size of the hit that hurts — it’s the opportunity cost. That money is a legitimate second-line center. A defensive upgrade. A difference-maker at the deadline. Instead, it’s backstopping a team that has no realistic path to relevance this spring. That’s what bad contracts actually cost: not dollars, but possibilities.

The Relief That’s Coming — and Its Limits

The cap rising to $104M in 2026-27 and $113.5M in 2027-28 will ease pressure across the league. Some of these contracts will look dramatically different when they represent 10% of cap space instead of 12% or more. Teams with patient front offices will benefit.

But several of these deals — Huberdeau’s in particular, and Nurse’s — will still be around when the cap peaks. The math improves. The problem doesn’t go away. And for teams in a short contention window right now, future cap relief is cold comfort.

Bad contracts don’t just hurt the team that signed them. They warp the league — they lock players in place, suppress competition at the deadline, and punish front offices for honest mistakes made years earlier. Every GM celebrating a blockbuster extension today should be staring hard at this list. Somebody’s name will be on it in three years. Probably somebody who looked like a steal when the ink dried.

Which of these contracts would you most want off your team’s books — and which front office deserves the most blame for signing it? Sound off on social media or drop your take in the comments.