Frank Vatrano's new contract changes the NHL landscape.

This one may genuinely change the game.

On Sunday, the Anaheim Ducks announced that they had signed forward Frank Vatrano to a new 3 year deal that will see the forward earn a grand total of $18 million. Now the math on that is pretty easy, that works out to an average annual value(AAV) and salary cap hit of $6 million per season right? Well not so fast.

Vatrano's contract will instead likely go down as a revolutionary piece of contract work given the rather extreme nature of the deferred money in his deal, deferred money that will not only impact his AAV but could also change the landscape of the National Hockey League for team's located in high tax areas.

In his new deal, a full 50% of the money that Vatrano is set to earn over the next 3 years has been deferred all the way to 2035. Not only is the money pushed back nearly a decade, but Vatrano will from that point only receive $900,000 a year over the course of the next 10 years before he receives the full value of his new contract.

That will bring his average annual value down from $6 million per season during the length of the deal down to just $4.57 million per season, which could have huge competitive implications for the Ducks who could use that extra room to add an extra player under the NHL's salary cap.

Vatrano's contract however has not been designed in this manner in order to facilitate the Ducks' cap situation, but instead to decrease the amount of taxation he will be subject to while in the state of California. California is a high tax state and Vatrano intends to be living elsewhere when he earns the money in 2025, perhaps even a no tax state like Florida or Texas for example. That will save Vatrano a huge amount of money in taxes and could be a loophole that players use again in the future to sign in other high tax areas like the country of Canada, or New York City.

Deferred money has become an increasingly popular method of payment on some player contracts and I wonder if the NHL will allow this to continue or work to counter these new workarounds in their next collective bargaining agreement with the players. Only one thing is certain right now, Vatrano's new deal has completely changed the way player contracts work in the NHL moving forward.