The Brock Boeser departure watch continues, and is now down to just two games left in what Boeser himself has already all-but-confirmed will be his last in a Vancouver Canucks jersey.

As soon as July 1, 2025 hits, Boeser becomes an unrestricted free agent – and other teams begin trying to convince him to sign with them.

Earlier in the week, we looked at the potential market for Boeser, and found it to be a large one. We identified at least ten teams that should have some interest in signing him this summer, and to be perfectly honest, we could have listed more.

But some of our regular readers mentioned that they were less interested in the ‘where’ of Boeser’s next contract, and more interested in the ‘what.’ As in, what’s he going to make? So, today, we set out to attempt to answer that question.

We think, however, that what most are really wondering is if Boeser will make more on the open market than he would have re-signing in Vancouver, and if so, then by how much? The answer to the first question is the easiest to answer, and it’s a ‘yes.’

If you believe the reporting at the time – and no one has since contradicted it – then one of the Canucks’ final offers to Boeser was a contract with a five-year term and an $8 million AAV, for a grand total of $40 million.

To beat that as a UFA, Boeser will need to either find a team willing to give him more than $8 million a year – something we find a little unlikely – or someone willing to give him more term. The latter, we think, is highly probable.

Really, it comes down to supply and demand. Those ten teams we identified in the previous article all have a clear-cut need for at least one additional top-six winger, and preferably as good of one as is available. That’s the demand side of the equation.

The supply side, however, is lacking. A total of 14 pending UFAs scored 20 or more goals this past season. Of that set, a full half – John Tavares, Matt Duchene, Brock Nelson, Sam Bennett, Mikael Granlund, Jack Roslovic, and the Canucks’ own Pius Suter – primarily play the centre position.

Of the wingers left over in a set, we’ve also got a couple who have been around long enough to be very, very selective about their free agent destinations, as in Brad Marchand, Kyle Palmieri, and Patrick Kane.

We’re left with, really, just Mitch Marner, Nikolaj Ehlers, Ryan Donato (who spent this year as a centre, too) and Boeser as true top-six, scoring wingers available.

Even then, we have to split the market up. Marner is a full tier or two ahead of the rest of his class, and should come close to doubling their salaries. Put bluntly, he’s a different class of asset as is Boeser, and the teams looking to offer him contracts will not necessarily be the same teams courting Boeser.

Donato, on the other hand, has all the looks of a one-year wonder who played big minutes on a bad team, and would be a risk for any team signing him in the hopes of consistent scoring.

No, when we talk about Boeser’s direct competition in signing this summer, it might legitimately be a class of two, with the only other seat being occupied by Ehlers. That gives Boeser some serious negotiating power.

The good folks over at AFPAnalytics, who have become renowned for their contract projections, predicted partway through the season that Boeser would sign the second-most-lucrative UFA contract this coming summer, after Marner, and they projected some truly whopping numbers.

They’ve got Boeser coming in at a seven-year contract with an AAV of $9,048,625 for a total of more than $63 million. That’s obviously a lot more than the $40 million he was last offered by the Canucks. But, with all due respect to AFP and their formula, we do think that’s potentially a bit high – unless the bidding war gets truly out of control.

A bit high, but not entirely out of the ballpark of reality. Especially not in this new era of expanding cap ceilings.

Think of it this way: when Boeser signed his current three-year, $6.65 million AAV extension, it represented some 8.06% of the total cap available. Under next year’s $95.5 million cap, however, 8.06% works out to about $7.7 million.

If we play that out into the next two years, we get $8.38 million (8.06% of $104 million) and $9.15 million (8.06% of $113.5 million).

In other words, were Boeser to sign for an AAV of $7.7 million this summer, it wouldn’t even technically be a raise – it’d be more like an adjustment to league inflation. And then it’d effectively be a pay decrease in each and every year after that.

Let’s also be clear: Boeser probably does deserve a raise. He scored 40 goals last year, and established a reputation as a clutch goal-scorer at that, particularly in the 2024 playoffs.

But let’s also be clear: Boeser doesn’t really need a raise in order to make more money than he would have in Vancouver.

This contract is going to cover Boeser from age 28 onward. Those years will be the tail-end of his prime, and then not his prime. But that’s almost always the case with UFA signings. Boeser is just one year older than the earliest age he could have reached UFA status at. For this market, he’s young.

Seven-year commitments get handed out to players every time the Free Agent Frenzy comes around. Four UFAs signed seven-year deals last summer, with three of them (Elias Lindholm, Brandon Montour, and Brady Skjei) being older than Boeser is now.

And that was before the flat-cap era officially ended. Now, with the purse-strings really loosened, we imagine we’re going to see one of the silliest spending periods in NHL history for the summer of 2025. Which will, naturally, only benefit Boeser and his bank account.

To summarize, in order to make considerably more than he would have with the Canucks’ final offer, all Boeser needs to do is convince one of the (at least) ten teams pursuing him to give him a seven-year contract at a rate that is consistent with his current salary plus league inflation.

Let’s just say it – that is absolutely going to happen.

Beyond that, it’s really just a matter of how choosy Boeser plays it with his destination. If he’s willing to go anywhere, then we can imagine the bidding war picking up steam pretty quickly, and then maybe Boeser does reach those $9 million+ projections put forth by AFP.

But being an outright mercenary doesn’t quite match Boeser’s personality profile. We can imagine he’ll probably have a smaller pool of teams in mind. But even then, there’s no reason to believe he’ll exit the summer of 2025 with anything less than $50 million in his pocket.

Since it’s that kind of article, we’ll end with an official, but tentative, prediction of Boeser signing a contract worth $7.75 million over a term of seven years for a grand total of $54.25 million (and probably some unfortunate no-trade clauses, too.)

But we’ll also add the caveat that we think it’s far more likely for our prediction to be under than over. That’s just going to be the nature of free agency in this brave, new post flat-cap world.