Friday morning we were about to finish recording the podcast So hockey when the conclusion of a new contractual agreement between the Canadian and defenseman Mike Matheson began to be leaked on social networks.
I can’t wait to see how much Matheson agreed to pay to continue playing in Montreal
I said, half-seriously, half-jokingly, to colleagues Alexandre Coupal and Marc Antoine Godin.
It’s Black Friday! It’s the best time of year for deals!
replied Coupal.
In the end, neither was far from the truth. The 31-year-old veteran imitated several of his teammates by granting a significant discount to his employer. Matheson thus signed a five-year agreement totaling $30 million.
A little over a month ago, Lane Hutson concluded his negotiations with the CH by leaving a dozen millions on the table. In this column, I explained at length why I believe that NHL hockey players should never accept agreements that devalue their performance. Especially when we know that they are subject to a salary cap which already considerably limits their income compared to a free market context.
As I do not intend to rewrite the same text by replacing the name of Hutson with that of Matheson, you are free to click on the previous hyperlink to read the complete argument.
Furthermore, some readers may want to write to me that the fate of these millionaire athletes does not soften them. However, they won’t need to do that because we all agree on that. This is not a question of the poverty of the rich, but rather of the strange culture that is spreading in the hockey business.
Last October, we learned that Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey and Ann-Renée Desbiens, three core members of La Victoire de Montréal, had granted discounts to their organization even though the average salary provided for in their collective agreement is around $55,000.
And these discounts were negotiated with joy after the same players had demanded for several years the creation of a professional league within which they would finally be able to be paid commensurate with their talent!
Laura Stacey and Marie-Philip Poulin, from La Victoire de Montréal.
Photo : The Canadian Press / Thomas Skrlj
The size of the negotiated salaries therefore has nothing to do with the strange reasoning by which an athlete ends up believing that he must give up the salary he deserves to allow his team to win. Or that he has to give up part of his salary to demonstrate to those around him that he really wants to win.
Let’s take this reasoning to the absurd: if all the players in a league accept a salary 20% below the market under the pretext that it will improve their chances of winning, no one will have any so-called competitive advantage. And if such a thing happened, what would these brilliant negotiators do next? Would they offer 30% or 40% discounts?
Now let’s return to the case of our friend Mike Matheson.
With Lane Hutson, Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Juraj Slafkovsky and Kaiden Guhle, the Quebec defender is added to an increasingly long list of Canadiens players who have accepted deals lower than their true market value.
Matheson’s case, however, differs from the other five in that he is coming off the best seasons of his career and this was a last chance for him to maximize the value of his talent.
For several seasons, Matheson has been one of the most used defensemen in the NHL. But let’s avoid going back to Matusalem and, for the purposes of discussion, let’s analyze the statistics from the start of the 2023-2024 season until today.
During this period, Mike Matheson was fourth in the NHL in ice time (averaging 25:16 per game) behind Zach Werenski, Quinn Hughes and Cale Makar.
And still during this period, Matheson generated the 18th total points (21-86-107) among NHL defensemen.
Given the complexity of the position they occupy, defenders’ usage time is a determining factor when analyzing the importance of their role within their team. Matheson was the CH’s most used player when the team was rebuilding and he is again this season despite the presence of a Calder Trophy winner (Hutson) and one of the most effective defensemen in the NHL (Noah Dobson) in the lineup.
Mike Matheson
Photo : Getty Images / Alex Goodlett
Among the 30 most used defensemen in the NHL, Matheson’s current salary ($4.875 million) ranks him 28th. The two defensemen who earn less than him are Matthew Schaefer (an Islanders rookie whose salary is set by the collective agreement) and Rasmus Andersson (from the Calgary Flames, whose contract was signed in 2020).
Spectacularly, by accepting a five-year agreement at an average salary of 6 million per season, Matheson does not move a bit in the salary scale of the 30 most used defensemen in the NHL. He is still ranked 28th! And this, even if the salary cap will be increased considerably in the coming seasons.
How much more could he have gotten if he had tested the autonomy market at the end of the season? Easily more than 6 million per year over a five year period.
A few years ago, Martin St-Louis saluted the great altruism of the veterans who participated in the launch of the Canadian’s reconstruction project.
These guys are willing to plant trees knowing they’ll probably never sit in the shade
he said graphically.
In addition to planting trees during lean years, Mike Matheson now subsidizes his place in the shade. Frédérick Back could undoubtedly have written a great story with that.
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