This past Tuesday, the Florida Panthers celebrated more than just a Stanley Cup banner raising and a dominant 6-4 win over the Boston Bruins. After the game, GM Bill Zito announced that playoff hero Carter Verhaeghe had signed an eight-year extension worth $56 million.

Verhaeghe’s new contract that kicks in next season will pay out an average annual value of $7 million per year until 2033, a year that, even after typing out, doesn’t feel like real-time. But he’s more than earned his job security. Verhaeghe’s coming off his second straight 70+ point season in Sunrise, while his combined 38 points in Florida’s two runs to the Stanley Cup Final tie him with Aleksander Barkov for the second most in that span.

And that hefty pay raise also likely tells us what the market looks like for a different winger: pending Vancouver Canucks free agent Brock Boeser.

Boeser is on the final year of a three-year bridge deal that pays him just $350,000 less than Verhaeghe is set to make and is coming off the undisputed best season of his career, with 40 goals and 73 points in the regular season and an incredibly clutch 12 points in 12 playoff games. Boeser being shockingly diagnosed with blood clots ahead of Game 7 against the Edmonton Oilers was arguably as crushing a blow to the Canucks’ Cup aspirations as losing Thatcher Demko to injury had been in the first round.

The situation has certainly changed just a couple of years after it looked like a trade might be in the interest of both the player and the Canucks. Boeser has become one of the team’s most irreplaceable leaders on the ice, and with both sides returning to the negotiating table before this year is out, Verhaeghe’s new contract is going to be one of the closest comparables in those conversations.

Boeser had one more point than Verhaeghe (72) in 2023-24, but the Panthers forward had the stronger numbers in the two seasons prior. Boeser’s case improves as the younger of the two players and in his overall consistency; his 45 points in 2019-20 remains the lowest full-season total of his career, while Verhaeghe had just 13 that year with Tampa.

The Canucks might point to a couple of differences in the situation Verhaeghe signed on to compared to Boeser. Verhaeghe already has a pair of Stanley Cup rings and is sticking with a Panthers core that’s trying to repeat as champions, potentially taking less to remain with a winner than he could’ve gotten on the open market. At which point Boeser’s camp will remind the Canucks that Florida has no state income tax, so $7 million goes a fair bit farther in Broward County than it would in British Columbia. Boeser is also a bigger part of the Canucks’ marketability than Verhaeghe is for the Panthers, as a regular All-Star and a core member of the team’s public profile since he was drafted in 2015.

The $7-8 million range makes a lot of sense for everyone involved, especially if you add one of Verhaeghe’s teammates into the conversation. West Vancouver’s Sam Reinhart signed his own eight-year deal earlier in the summer for an $8.625 million average annual value (AAV), fresh off a 57-goal, 94-point campaign in 2023-24. If Boeser is able to tack on another ten goals to his personal best 40 last year, he’ll practically guarantee his next contract starts with an eight, and the Canucks would be crazy not to write the cheque.

If he puts up numbers in the same ballpark as last season and stays healthy, it’ll be hard to find a number for Boeser that looks like a serious overpay. But if Carter Verhaeghe’s contract is the benchmark, it’s created a market where the outlook of the franchise will make all the difference in the final price tag.

And hopefully, that’s a place where Boeser and the Canucks will find a lot of common positive ground.