The next David Pastrnak? Why Matt Boldy’s new contract will become one of the NHL’s biggest bargains

Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

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The announcement immediately felt very…familiar.

The contract signed Jan. 16, 2023: seven years, $7 million AAV and 8.48 percent of the team’s cap space for a 21-year-old scoring winger who was drafted in the first round and had 27 goals in his first 89 NHL games. That was Matt Boldy’s new deal with the Minnesota Wild.

The contract announced Sept. 14, 2017: six years, $6.67 million AAV and 8.89 percent of the team’s cap space for a 21-year old scoring winger who was drafted in the first round and had 22 goals in his first 89 NHL games. That was David Pastrnak’s pact with the Boston Bruins. He had a larger sample by the time he actually signed his deal, however, already 172 games and a freshly completed 34-goal season, because he went right to the NHL from the Draft in 2014-15 as the league’s youngest player.

If you ask any reasonably avid NHL fan on the street to rhyme off the best bargain contracts in the NHL today, one of the first mentioned will likely be Pastrnak’s. While it’s true the entire Bruins team culture buys into the idea of making less to win more, Pastrnak’s AAV feels criminal at this point. Since the start of that breakout 2016-17 season, only Alex Ovechkin, Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid have more goals. Pastrnak is the 2019-20 Rocket Richard Trophy co-winner and belongs in the elite tier of goal-scorers on the planet today. He’s 27 goals away from 300 for his career and has a real chance to reach the mark this season before he turns 27 in May. He’s on a Hall of Fame trajectory.

Is it fair, then, to directly compare Boldy’s new deal to Pastrnak’s after I just called Pastrnak a future Hall of Famer? The point isn’t to say Boldy’s career path is identical to Pasta’s. But they do have some striking similarities in pedigree and production relative to age, and it seems Wild GM Bill Guerin is speculating wisely on a deal that might quickly become one of the NHL’s best. Keep in mind that Pastrnak’s production has blown past his AAV to the point of being a $10 million player over the course of his contract. Even if Boldy produces at 80 percent of Pastrnak’s level during his deal, Boldy will qualify as an incredible steal.

And how likely is that to happen? Very, I’ll dare say. Boldy, the 12th overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, has done little at any point to dissuade the idea he’ll mature into perennial 30- or even 40-goal scorer in this league. He was a dominant sniper at the U.S. NTDP leading up to his draft year; showed well in his one season at Boston College; and made the AHL look so easy that he spent a total of 24 games there, during which he racked up 28 points.

As a rookie last season, he transitioned smoothly to the NHL level, finding nice chemistry with Kevin Fiala and Frederick Gaudreau on Minny’s second line, amassing 39 points in 47 games and finishing eighth in the Calder Trophy vote despite playing half a season. In 2022-23, Boldy remains a regular top-sixer, entrusted with an extra two minutes per game by coach Dean Evason, and while a depressed shooting percentage has held him just below a 25-goal pace, Boldy’s under-the-hood metrics suggest he’s maturing as a player. Per Natural Stat Trick, Among 183 forwards with at least 500 minutes played at 5-on-5, he sits 15th in individual shot attempts per 60. His individual scoring chances, high-danger chances and expected goals per 60 are all up. He’s likely had a harder time finishing because he’s keeping inferior company this season with Fiala gone. Boldy’s most frequent linemate has been the high-on-moxie, low-on-finesse Gaudreau, and they currently hold down a second-line gig alongside Ryan Hartman.

If the Wild can find a way to improve the quality of their forward group, whether it’s by trading for a center or eventually seeing prospect Marco Rossi mature, it will only help Boldy, who has already shown marked improvement as a play driver. With slightly better puck luck and finishing ability on his own line, he could bust out even before this season ends and reach 30 goals.

Bottom line: Boldy is already generating chances like a player who will be worth $7 million by the first season of his contract. If more of those pucks start to go in, his deal will quickly go from optimistic projection to steal. Look what happened to the Buffalo Sabres’ emerging superstar Tage Thompson, who signed a seven-year pact at $7.14 million per year over the summer and raised many an eyebrow. Or, for another comparable similar to Pastrnak’s: his good friend and fellow 2014 draftee William Nylander, who inked a six-year deal at 22 years old for a $6.96 million AAV and rapidly established himself as the major bargain of the Big Four in Toronto, the other three of whom have eight-figure cap hits.

An NHL GM once told me: “The most important thing you can do in the salary cap era is have above average players on entry-level deals contributing meaningfully to your lineup every night.” The Wild have that already in Boldy. But perhaps the second-most important thing is to project enough on future stars to lock them up at extreme long-term bargains. That’s a particularly important principle for the Wild as they weather the buyout penalty storm of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise’s matching contracts, with the dead money peaking at a combined $14,743,588 for the next two seasons after this one.

It appears GM Bill Guerin has done diligent homework here. And it won’t be long before he’s lauded for signing one of the best bargain contracts in the NHL. Bet on a Boldy breakout.

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The next David Pastrnak? Why Matt Boldy’s new contract will become one of the NHL’s biggest bargains

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