The Washington Capitals have signed Ryan Leonard, one of their top young forwards, to an eight-year contract extension carrying a $10.5MM AAV, per a team announcement.
The deal was first reported by Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. Leonard’s new contract will not come into effect until the 2027-28 season.
The deal represents yet another long-term bet made on a player just before the new CBA’s rules about contract term and structure come into effect. Starting tomorrow, teams will only be able to offer a maximum of seven years on any contract extension, and will be more restricted in terms of how they can allocate money across the length of a contract.
Washington has elected to make its bet on Leonard’s future before those new rules come into effect. That is similar to bets made on promising young talent made in recent weeks by other teams across the league, such as the Vancouver Canucks who signed defenseman Zeev Buium to an eight-year, $9.38MM AAV contract extension after his rookie season.
The Buffalo Sabres signed second-year NHLer Noah Ostlund to his own eight-year deal recently as well, to name another example.
Leonard stands alone in terms of the financial magnitude of the deal, though. James Mirtle of The Athletic noted that Leonard’s contract is the most expensive in NHL history for a player with fewer than 100 career games played.
Like the many other teams who have inked similar deals for young talent, the Capitals have not committed to paying for what Leonard has already accomplished in the NHL so far, but rather for what they believe he’ll be able to accomplish over nearly the next decade.
The 21-year-old has long been one of the top prospects in Washington, since he was made the No. 8 overall pick at the 2023 draft.
A 6’1″, 205-pound natural winger, Leonard plays a hard-nosed style blending physicality and relentless competitiveness with a real, dynamic skill level. Leonard scored 20 goals and 45 points in 75 games as a rookie, finishing No. 8 in Calder Trophy voting.
Leonard was able to reach those heights as a rookie while still not playing a major role in the team’s lineup.
While he got a steady dose of power play time, Leonard’s overall time on ice per game of 14:24 ranked 10th among Capitals forwards with at least 50 games played in 2025-26. At some point in the lifetime of that contract, that usage is going to increase significantly.
With that said, it’s not easy to envision a path for Leonard to enter into the top-six in the immediate term. Two of Washington’s most substantial offseason additions were on the wings, with the team trading for both Alex Tuch from the Buffalo Sabres and Jordan Kyrou from the St. Louis Blues.
Tuch is set to make $10.5MM for the next eight years, while Kyrou is under contract at just over $8MM per year until the summer of 2031.
In addition to Kyrou and Tuch, Washington also has star winger Tom Wilson under contract at $6.5MM through 2030-31, and he’s entrenched in a top-six role. 25-year-old Aliaksei Protas is only under contract until the summer of 2029, but most envision the 25-year-old as a key piece for the team after scoring 118 points over the last two seasons.
With Kyrou, Wilson, Tuch, and Protas all locked in as key wingers for the team moving forward, it’s difficult to see a path for Leonard to be able to live up to his cap hit in the near term. He has all the talent to become a player worth $10.5MM per year, but he’s not there yet at this point.
He also may not receive the kind of on-ice role he’ll need to reach new heights in terms of production for some time.
If the salary cap’s upper limit continues to rise at a rapid annual rate, this deal will almost certainly become a market-rate contract, if not even a below-market rate contract in its final few years.
But there is definitely some risk attached, even if that risk is more associated with the other moves the team has made at Leonard’s position, rather than about any doubt that Leonard will become a stellar NHL player.
On that matter, it seems Leonard is already well on his way. It just feels as though his compensation has arrived a little bit earlier than his star status – a potentially inevitable byproduct of the looming change in league rules.